In the summer of my fourteenth year, towards the very end of childhood, I saw something that changed all our lives.

We were out for a walk, Dad, Clara, and I. I'd gone ahead, half-running, half slithering down the chalk path which led from the top of Woodcote Hill. Now I was resting on the stile at the bottom. My father, equipped with a panama hat, and my sister. who'd just reached that age when you begin to be self-conscious about running down hills, were still making their way down the path towards me.

I remember watching them , just watching them, while whatever the thoughts I'd been thinking receded and my mind grew transparent like glass. I seemed to see, not my father and my sister, but two figures who I'd never seen before, two figures who might have stepped out of an Impressionist painting, the one in a panama hat and the other in a dress of green lawn.