She passed on all the detailed street directions Seymour had given her earlier, then slammed the phone down quite hard. The little brass ornaments which Thelma dusted so assiduously every day chimed against one another in protest. Seymour went back into the hall, hardly daring to look at her, but she said with composure, ‘Here’s thirty cents to cover the phone call.’

‘You don’t have to,’ he said politely, though Thelma had a small slotted cannister on the cane table firmly labelled ‘Phone Money’. Lynne, however, had slipped the coins in already and picked up her neat leather overarm bag. She went out through the back door, not waiting for him, but Seymour followed.

‘You don’t have to come back there again,’ she said, halfway over the gate. ‘Thanks for letting us know. I should have said that before, shouldn’t I? Well, thanks, anyhow. Angela will be fine, my father’s coming from work and he shouldn’t be long. He’ll take care of everything.’

‘I was…I should…maybe I should stay with Angie, too, till he gets here,’ Seymour stammered, so unaccustomed to defying people that the words felt as brittle as dead leaves in his mouth. He couldn’t even meet her eyes, this cool, poised person who had more claim to Angie than he had. But he didn’t like to think of those eyes raking scornfully over the sad disorder of Angie’s room, and Angie lying helpless in bed, unable to defend herself against that intrusion. Angie needed someone else to be there during the waiting, a friend…

‘I said you don’t have to,’ Lynne snapped. ‘You’re not even related to her. It’s silly, you know, a little kid your age hanging around with someone grown up. Mum said so. She was very surprised your mother or aunt or whoever it is lets you roam about all over the place with a twenty year old. Specially someone like Angela.’

‘What do you mean, someone like Angie?’ Seymour said indignantly, and the indignation bolstered some feeble reserve of courage. ‘Why are you being so rotten to her? Your mum was, too, the day we went out there, not even looking at her birthday present properly…She just shoved it away in that cupboard, hardly even bothered to look at it! What’s wrong with your family? Not even asking her to that dinner you all went to…You all charged off to the theatre and you didn’t even ask her along, she was hurt about that…Angie’s feeling crook…sick. I bet you won’t even put the blanket over her if she’s knocked it off again! She’s got the flu really bad, she gets it all the time…’

Please let Lynne say it’s the flu, he thought desperately.