'He's just seeing the doctor now. Oh, but I'm worried! He's been using himself rather too freely. He needs to work less - and the English climate isn't good for him.'

'Well, why don't you go abroad? The Alps would be good for his lungs - the air is simply smashing. Haven't you just come back from Italy? Or there's always Austria. Lovely country - such charming people.'

Austria. Klimt, Schiele, Rainer Marie Rilke, Franz Joseph and Sisi, Freud, Vienna, Innsbruck, Salzburg...

She had never made it there from Italy, across the Alps. The unmovable mountains...

'He says I must go abroad.'

'Where?'

'Austria.'

A pause.

'Will you go with me?'

Another pause, but shorter.

'Of course.'

Of course she will. She has been away too long. If she had kept an eye on him, perhaps it would not have come to this - this exile.

A mountain railway, the carriage rattling from side to side as it winds its way up the mountainside. Innsbruck, Salzburg, Vienna disappear away beneath her.

'How long must we stay there?'

'For as long as is necessary.'

Possibly forever, is what he does not say.

Austria. Klimt, Schiele, Rainer Marie Rilke...and the immovable mountains, the beautiful mountains.

A lake, blue as a sapphire and studded all around with wooden chalets. A terrifying ferry - she will not be using that! Hotels and little shops, people to talk to, German to practise.

She sees - possibilities. Languages to practise, a new culture to explore, walks to take...a brother, to nurse back to health.

'Come for a walk with me?'

'Must I?'

He must. Exercise, fresh air, very important.

A sprawl of houses - a loose-limbed village scrabbling up from the lakeside. A girl in a gym slip, skipping through a gate in a wicker fence.

A school!

She sees - him pause, the interest flicker. She frets. He worked too hard before - he must not be allowed to again! She must watch him, for soon, she knows, he will be going through that same wicker gate.

She only hopes that he will be wise...