Douglas lit a cigarette. His hair flopped over his forehead. “Your mother has insisted—”

“I have suggested,” corrected Sybil.

“Suggested,” he kept his eyes on Enid, “that we think about his future.”

“What future?” said Enid.

“Quite,” replied Sybil.

“And our own,” said Douglas.

“I mean,” she changed tack, “he’ll come home and—” for a month the obvious had crept and snarled at Enid from the shadows. She said, “There’s always Finetta.”

Sybil laughed, a short bark that had nothing to do with merriment. Enid cut into it: “Joan’s a girl.” Brown paper wedged beneath her mother’s knuckles five years ago, her words marching relentlessly over grief, Joan’s laugh.

Joan lit another cigarette. Smoke shrouded her face, and drifted above her.

“Joan,” Sybil banged the flat of her palm on the armrest of her chair, “is not your concern.” She looked at her quickly, a tight-lipped smile that Joan returned. Then she patted the armrest as if it were Joan’s hand.

“But then what?” exclaimed Enid. Despair made her brave. “She hasn’t got any useful children either, she hasn’t got any children at all.”

Colour rose through Sybil’s pale, paper skin. Her soft hand became a claw, her blue eyes hardened and she seemed to rise in her chair toward Enid. “How dare you ask? You had one effort and one effort only: to provide this family with an heir. What I do now is not yours to discuss.” She collapsed back, exhausted.

Enid left the room. She went out into the garden where the evening sun lengthened darkness into ghosts of fully formed trees. At the far end, before the fields began, a tangle of elder and willow grew beside a narrow river. She took off her coat and lay in the long grass.

The skin of her lips was torn and chewed, the crevice of her thumbnail stung. She sucked it, then rubbed her hands over her face and moaned quietly into the flesh of her palms. If she could have died today and taken him with her they could have buried them both in the tomb of her brother and father, and none of her family would anymore have the inconvenience of a daughter who couldn’t and an heir who wasn’t. Perhaps she could throw herself down the stairs, bash her head, end up the same way as him, and they could go together to whatever home for cripples her mother had in mind. Shut them both away. Forget them both in a cupboard, discard them both with the other of society’s rejects, their name a taboo, never mentioned. Or leave him to his fate and throw herself in the river, put stones in her pockets and force her own head down.