Grandfather, trotting back into the room with his tin and matches, said brightly: ‘Well, Philip Greengrass just got married, you know, Veda. Lovely girl from Hillgrove. She’s been to the university.’ His face was gleaming—possibly in anticipation of the pipe. I looked up at Hannah, but all I could see was a bulb of snot in her nose, hanging unattended, slightly shocking in a person so nearly grown-up.

‘Oh,’ said Mother. ‘Lucky Philip. New England University.’ The ash had grown long on her cigarette and Tilde got up and fetched an ashtray from the sideboard.

Gramp nodded, not understanding her tone.

But Mother was looking at Jane, not at Gramp, and her eyes had a hard gleam in them, like a particular marble I had, a tombola with a spiral of plankton in its centre. ‘You should look into it for yourself, Jane, the university. You might get your own husband. Then you won’t have to exercise yourself about mine.’

Jane had gone red.

‘I don’t know why you have to be so nasty,’ Jane said.

Grandmother got up and started collecting plates.

‘Yes, come now, Veda,’ said Tilde, and put her hand across the table towards Mother.

Mother’s eyes flashed. ‘It’s not my fault, Jane, that you’re stuck here at home with our parents …’

Jane was red like a tomato.

‘You’re being obnoxious, Veda,’ said Grandmother. ‘Utterly obnoxious. You’re behaving like a drunk. The fact is you’ve married a man we know nothing about …’

‘And don’t use the word university with us, Veda,’ Jane piped up. ‘We all know the state of your university studies …’

Mother bore this with calm and drank the last of her wine.

‘Come now, come now, everyone,’ said Grandfather. (He had just got his pipe packed, for god’s sake.) ‘Let’s forget all this …’

But Grandmother was the person Mother had learned her coldness from, I suddenly understood. Mother took a mouthful of Riesling and Grandmother watched it go down her throat, three gulps of the Adam’s apple.

‘Someone needs to say it,’ said Grandmother softly and clearly. ‘And I’m going to.’ She looked up at Mother. ‘Fact is, in my day, there were names for girls like you, Veda, and they were not nice names …’

Mother nearly choked on her wine, in hilarity or outrage, I am not sure, because at this point, I was collected by Tilde, as was Hannah, and swept out of the room.

It was straight up the stairs and into bed in the tightly tucked single bed. The door was closed, the sounds muffled. All I could hear distinctly was the clock ticking on the bedside table. And the little side-lamp buzzing a dangerous electrical buzz, like wasps approaching.