Time must do that; it will, spitefully, just when Jennifer has settled into a comfortably familiar pattern of surviving with some degree of relief.

Till then Jennifer must purposefully tread a path, so purposeful must be Jennifer’s tread that no one must realize that the journey has been far more taxing than anyone can ever guess.

No one must see that side that can suddenly move them to tears; twenty-one-year-old Jennifer being tossed between vulnerability and tough-minded disdain.

Beside the extinguished childhood of her daughter, the mother’s future appears radiant.

She has just come in from the office, her career has never been better, her personal life is also on the up after a long time, the worst is behind her, it can only get better, just that one rough bump left.

‘The children are really helping me, they have moved me out of the bedroom from behind that closed door, I sleep with them now. They tell me, “Don’t worry mummy, maybe you will find another man who will be good to you.” I loved him, you know, I really loved him; ours was a love marriage and I so wanted a happy house and small family. We were a big family and well-off financially, but not such a happy one. We were six sisters, I was the youngest and also the quietest, I never remember speaking much except to my mother; my mother was frightened of my father, she was submissive because he was so dominating. But she was a great source of comfort to me when I would go to her with the problems with my husband, “Bear it, Genevieve,” she would say, “bear it, since there is no other way”.

‘I bore it, I kept a good house, I went to work and did well in my career. He resented it, he even got me pregnant with the twins because of it, I did not want more children after my first two but he forced it upon me. I continued to work after the twins and even did better.’

She sounds genuinely surprised that she could have been so focussed about her work.

A pause, then she continues, ‘He would display his resentment in other odd ways; when my grandmother died, he did not let me go for her funeral. I remember, he was in one of his moods and he flew into a rage so I spoke to my mother on the phone and decided against going. When my mother died, he said, ‘She is gone and she has taken my peace of mind with her.’

Why did she do nothing at all about the husband and the maid?

Her voice, mild as milk. ‘I did not know.’

Really?

Her voice modulates without transition into the tearful. ‘The maid came to work in our house when she was around nineteen, she was there till she was twenty-five years old, he gave her clothes and good food, she got pregnant, he threw her out of the house. The maid’s mother told me all this when she came to ask me for money for the maid’s abortion. I asked him afterwards why he did all that, he said, “Well you were at work, were you not? And the maid kept threatening to leave, somebody needed to be there to look after the kids and their needs.” ’