“No. The god we don’t believe in did, though I don’t expect she’d say the same. Douglas said something about her wanting to go to church all the time. Christ.”

“Won’t that please your mother?”

“Nothing will please my mother until she’s holding a healthy grandson on her lap.”

“And he reaches twenty-one.”

“He doesn’t have to reach twenty-one. She can give it away anytime she likes.”

“And put Douglas and your sister in charge?”

“No.” Joan looked on the floor for her hair clip. “No, I don’t suppose she’ll do that. Twenty-one then.” She raised her empty glass. “Here’s to my sister having a boy and him coming of age with all his faculties intact.”

Pat put the guard up on the fire. It was getting dark outside. “Shall we go?”

“What’s on?” Joan was dressed but only just, in a shirt buttoned badly, and long-johns that used to belong to her brother. “I shall have to change.”

“I wasn’t expecting you to turn up like that,” said Pat. She found her slippers and put them on.

Even after six years, Joan couldn’t help watching her: the way she dropped her glass on the table on her way out, left her cigarettes abandoned on the rug with the scent of her, the last of her brown hair disappearing through the doorway, a fingertip trailed across the frame. The stairs creaked as she made her way up to the sloping warm bedroom above.

The bar at The Adelphi was a mass of bright lights and bright people, amusing anecdotes and laughter. Joan glanced about at familiar faces, and faces so similar it was as if a pig had bred too big a litter; as though any of these people belonged anywhere but in their mother’s womb or in their grave. Everything between was a trying, desperate attempt at being one with their surroundings when what, compared to womb or grave, could be anything but fake? It made their foreheads crease, their eyes strain, their mouths pinch. It made them drink too much.

What a bore. She wished she was at home. Pat handed her a cocktail. “Anyone interesting?” Joan shook her head. “You were staring at the door as if your life depended on it.”

“I thought I saw Douglas.”

“You did. He came in with that female in too much fur.” Pat nodded toward a woman on the other side of the room who was standing alone, looking lost.

“With her?”

“Do you know her?”

Joan shook her head.

“Mabel Wormald. He’s been seen with her rather a lot, apparently.”

“How do you know?”

“Dotty told me.” Dotty was a friend of theirs. Her name suited her. She was laughing loudly with a group on Pat’s other side. “You were staring so hard you didn’t hear her.”

“I suppose she’s a friend of someone’s.”