White. Rosie Thomas

searching for the stars through the drifting curtain of steam.

      The next afternoon Ralf flew the three of them in the helicopter down to Kamloops for their return flight to Vancouver. He walked with Finch to the departure gate, and when the flight was boarding James and Kitty tactfully went on ahead.

      ‘You know where I am.’

      Finch hesitated, ashamed to find that at this last minute she was tempted to retract everything she had said in exchange for the promise of comfort and security. Ralf was large and strong and, in retrospect, reassuring. She squeezed down hard on the impulse. ‘Of course I do.’

      He kissed her – not on the mouth but on the cheek, as affectionately as if he were James. ‘And call me, when you can.’

      ‘Of course I will.’

      It was finished, both of them knew it.

      Isn’t this what you wanted? Finch’s interior voice enquired impatiently.

      He stood back to let her walk away. She turned round once to look at him, lifted her hand, then marched forward.

      She took her seat in front of Kitty and James. Kitty made a small sad face, turning down the corners of her mouth, and James nodded calmly. The place next to Finch was empty and as the little plane climbed and disconcertingly rocked through the layers of cloud she thought about the man who had made himself her neighbour on the way up from Oregon. My wife is a nervous flier, he had said presumptuously. She had forgotten his name.

      Breathing as evenly as she could, Finch rested her head against the seat back. This time the day after tomorrow she would be airborne again. All her expedition kit was double-checked, packed, labelled, waiting in her tidy apartment. The medical supplies she had ordered with George Heywood’s authorisation were already with the main body of expedition stores in Kathmandu. There remained only two more days and dinner with her family to negotiate.

      ‘Everything looks fine,’ Finch told her last patient of the day, as she peeled off her gloves. They chatted while the woman dressed and agreed that they would continue with the hormone replacement therapy for a further twelve months. A routine consultation, at the end of a routine afternoon surgery. At the door, the woman asked her, ‘When will you be back?’

      ‘Three months, give or take.’ Finch smiled. The knot under her diaphragm was so tight now that it threatened to impede her breathing. ‘Anything you need in that time, Dr Frame will be here to look after you, of course.’

      ‘Good luck,’ her patient said and Finch thanked her warmly.

      She went to the bathroom and took a quick shower, then changed into a dark-blue dress with a deep V-front. She put on earrings and made up her face. It was time for her farewell dinner with the family. Marcus and Tanya would be there as well as James and Kitty, and to complete the party Caleb and Jessica were flying all the way up from San Diego where Caleb was working on a film about mother whales.

      Finch locked up the surgery and drove herself to the North Vancouver shore, to the house in which Angus and Clare Buchanan had brought up their children. She parked her Honda in the driveway behind Marcus’s Lexus and let herself in through the back door. There was no front door, as such. The long, low, two-storey house had been designed for his family by Angus himself. The bedrooms and bathrooms and Angus’s study were on the lower level, and a dramatic open stairway led to the upper floor. Almost the whole of this space was taken up by one huge room with a wall of glass looking over a rocky inlet and southwards across a great sweep of water and sky towards Victoria. This early evening the room seemed to melt into an expanse of filmy cloud and sea spray.

      Finch’s parents and James and Marcus and their wives were sitting with their drinks in an encampment of modern furniture near the middle of the room. Angus and Clare collected primitive art, and their native American figure carvings and huge painted masks from Papua New Guinea seemed to diminish the living occupants of the room. When Finch was small, the mask faces regularly appeared in her dreams.

      ‘Darling,’ Clare said in delight. ‘How pretty you look. Doesn’t she, Angus?’

      It had always been her way to insist on her daughter’s prettiness. While she was still young enough to be docile, Clare had dressed her in floral blouses and tucked pinafores until Finch had clamoured for dungarees and plaid shirts like her brothers’.

      ‘But you were my only girl, darling, after three huge boys,’ Clare always protested to her recriminatory adolescent daughter. ‘Can you blame me for being mad for you in pink ribbons?’

      There was never any blaming Clare for anything. She had been a devoted and loyal mother, a serious cook and gardener, a recreational painter and an assiduous PR for her husband’s business. She was small-boned and porcelain-skinned, and utterly intractable.

      ‘She does,’ her husband agreed. He kissed Finch on the top of her head. ‘Hello, Bunny.’ He always called her Bunny.

      Bunny Wunnikins, Suzy would have mouthed, jabbing two fingers towards the back of her throat and rolling her eyes in disgust. Jesus, your family is just too much.

      Angus was very tall and, in his early seventies, still handsome. His sons all resembled him. Finch had inherited her mother’s dark colouring, but not her petite build. She moved round, now, to her brothers and their wives and kissed them all, and took the glass of Chardonnay her father poured for her.

      ‘Good luck to you and God bless,’ Angus started to toast her, but Clare cut in.

      ‘Oh darling, wait until Caleb and Jessica get here for the speech, won’t you? I so want everything to be right tonight. It’s the last time we’ll all be together for … for …’ Her eyes went misty.

      Suzy would have groaned – fucking speeches. We all love you so much. Christ! And Finch would have answered: It’s okay for you. You’re from a broken home.

      Aloud, she said, ‘I’m going to be away – doing something I really want – for three months, tops. There’s no need to be sad about it, you know.’

      Tanya pulled down the hem of her skirt to cover more of her legs. Everyone heard Caleb arriving and slamming the downstairs door.

      ‘Here they are.’

      ‘How wonderful it is to have all the family together.’

      ‘Let me get the glasses.’

      ‘So, Finch-bird. All ready for the off?’

      The youngest brother and his wife appeared, straight from the airport. Their six-year-old was with Jessica’s sister and Jessica carried the sleepy two-year-old in her arms. Jessica was the best-looking of the three wives. She had worked as a catwalk model in her twenties and before motherhood she had had a brief film career, now on hold, as she put it.

      ‘Here at last.’

      ‘Sorry we’re late, guys. Stacked, would you believe? Hi, Mommy. You look great.’

      ‘Can I make him up a little drink, Clare? If I read him a story he might just settle. He wouldn’t sleep on the flight, or I’d let him stay up with his gran …’

      ‘Give me a kiss. There.’

      ‘Do you want to put him down here, with his head on this cushion, darling? Or straight into bed downstairs? Hello, sweet. Are you Granny’s boy?’

      They’ve made the effort to come tonight, to give me a send-off, Finch reflected. It’s important for us, the way that birthdays and Christmases are in this family. It isn’t their fault that I would rather have slipped away quietly and held the reunion after I’ve done something worth remarking on instead of just having talked too much about it in advance.

      On the other side of the sofa arrangement Angus had launched into his speech. ‘… and so God bless you, Finch, and keep you safe,’ he determinedly finished.

      Everybody else made a show of raising their glasses and murmuring appropriately.

      ‘Wish I was going.’