‘You’re all against me,’ Marjorie sobbed, and because he was her husband and she didn’t much care what she said in front of him. ‘Pauline’s got pills from her nursing days, morphine and I don’t know what. There ought to be – what’s it called? – euthanasia. There ought to be a way of putting people like Mother out of their misery.’

He looked at her, his eyes narrowing. ‘There isn’t. Maybe dogs are luckier than people. There isn’t a geriatric hospital that’ll take her either. There’s no one but us, Marge, so you’d better turn off the waterworks and make up your mind to it.’

She saw how it would be. It would take months for Mother to sell her house and get the money for an extension to theirs, a year perhaps before that extension was built. Even when it was built and Mother was installed, things would be bad enough. But before that . . .! Her dining room turned into a bedroom, every evening spoiled by the business of getting Mother to bed, nights that would be even worse than when Brian and Susan were babies. And she wasn’t thirty any more. The television turned down to a murmur once Mother was in bed, her shopping times curtailed, her little afternoon visits to the cinema over for good. Marjorie wondered if she would have the courage to throw herself downstairs, break a leg, so that they would understand having Mother was out of the question. But she might break her neck . . .

And all the while this was going on, Pauline would be living in the splendour of Campden Hill, Mrs Something Russian, with a new husband, an educated, important, rich man. Giving parties. Entertaining eminent surgeons and professors and whatnot. Going abroad. It was unbearable. She might lack the courage to throw herself downstairs, but she thought she could be brave enough to confront Pauline here and now and tell her No. No, I won’t. You took it on, you must go through with it. Crack up, break down, go crazy, die. Yes, die before I’ll ruin my life for you.

Of course, she wouldn’t put it like that. She would be firm and kind. She would even offer to sit with Mother sometimes so that Pauline could go out. Anything, anything, except that permanency which would trap her as Pauline had been trapped.

Things are never as we imagine they will be. No situation ever parallels our prevision of it. Marjorie, when she at last called, expected an irate resentful Pauline, perhaps even a Pauline harassed by wedding plans. She expected Mother to be bewildered by the proposed changes in her life. And both, she thought, would be bitter against her for her long absence. But Mother was just the same, pleased to see her, anxious to get her alone for those little whispered confidences, even more anxious to know if she was better. Her purblind eyes searched Marjorie’s face for signs of debility, held her hand, pressed her to wrap up warm.