"You know what it's about," Posy had said to Rupert at lunch, talking of the doctor's summons at five.

"Perfectly. We're going to have to decide whether to pull the plug on our father," Rupert said.

"Of course, we couldn't possibly."

"How can we know? We haven't heard the medical details. Maybe it would be a kindness, or maybe..." His voice betrayed the poorly mastered panic she felt herself. She saw that he had shaved and cut himself since they arrived, and had stuck a little tissue on the place.

"This is so - so extraordinary. What a thing to happen," said Posy. "Father has always been just a bloody whole lot of trouble." She dabbed at tears and tried to sound calm. It was true. Growing up, their lives had always been organized around his comings and goings, trips to France, purchases - new car, new place in the country, boat, once even a racehorse - the sorts of things that would suddenly be sold. When he and Pam had divorced, a sort of boring lull had oppressed them, and she had thought it was Father they missed; perhaps is was only the excitement.

"This cheese is remarkable," sighed Rupert, unwilling to talk any more about it all. "They do cheese better in France."

"I like France, I've always liked France," Posy said, looking around at the comfy dining room, with its pink tablecloths, flowers, displays of porcelain edelweiss, and glass cases along the walls featuring Chef Jaffe's signature china.

"Except for the French," Rupert said. It was an Englishman's obligatory rejoinder.

"Even the French," Posy insisted, suddenly in a better mood, her spirit armed by the wine against the sorrow and pain they had come to France to experience. "The doctor was nice." Though she didn't like doctors.

"Doctors are always nice, it's their duty, even French ones," Rupert said.

"I think doctors are foul," declared Posy.

At four, Kip came in from the slopes, checked on Harry, who was napping under the glowering supervision of Tamara, and started again the cumbersome trip down to Moutiers, hoping vainly that the English brother and sister would offer him a ride. He had been too shy to remind them that he, too, had been sent for, and they had not approached him at lunch. They had sat together at a window table, seeming to have little to say to each other, though Kip could see them sometimes waving their hands and shaking their heads in a burst of animation. They never, that he could see, looked at him or even at their brother Harry.