‘He is, but I wasn’t thinking that.’ I turned into the drive and pulled up in front of the house. I turned to her. ‘I was wondering how on earth I’d managed to revert to my adolescent self quite so seamlessly, with you and your friends organizing my social life and you taking centre stage as Mrs Bennett.’

My mother grinned, and it must have been a relief: she’d been sitting on it for ages. ‘Well, you barely had an adolescence, if you remember. Wouldn’t let me organize it, as Helena did hers, if you recall. You were determined to go it alone, and got it disastrously wrong, if you don’t mind my saying so. So you can hardly object if I have a little go now.’

She cast me a triumphant glance and then got out of the car all on her own, without me having to go round and help. She shut her door with a flourish and started up the drive to the porch well ahead of me, but then I had banned high heels and found her some very acceptable low pumps, which at least allowed her to walk. Nonetheless, she had a new buoyancy about her, I decided, as I got out myself and closed my door. As if she was very much looking forward to her home-made chicken pie and a spot of cheese, and might even stay up to watch the news in front of the fire I’d laid, before going to bed in the fresh sheets I’d changed for her today. Well, bully for her, I thought, as I followed her up the gravel drive, realizing that it was me, for a change, who was exhausted, and in need of an early night.

13

A few days passed. My parents and I settled into a comfortable routine of shopping in the morning – my mother liked to come with me – and ticking off any long-avoided jobs in the afternoon. Bills that could no longer be settled by cheque and that, due to their ignorance of online banking, had been quietly ignored, were paid. The boiler was serviced. Wood for the fire was ordered so we didn’t have to chop our own, and the gutters were cleared by a local tradesman: two things which I was horrified to learn my father had still been doing until relatively recently. They both took trips to specialists at the local hospital to confirm their minor operations and, as a result, I think, became less anxious (my mother) and less defensive (my father).