Anyone less like a potential bride than Pauline Marjorie couldn’t have imagined. She seemed thinner than ever, and her face, bruise-dark, patchily shadowed, lined like raisin skin, reminded her of pictures she had seen of Indian beggars. Marjorie followed her into the kitchen when she went to make tea and gathered up her courage.

‘How have you been keeping, Pauline?’

‘All right. Just the same.’ And although she hadn’t been asked, Pauline said, ‘Mother had me up four times in the night. She fell over in the passage and I had to drag her back to bed. The laundry didn’t come, so I did the sheets myself. It’s a job getting them dry when it’s raining like today.’

‘I was thinking, I could come in two evenings a week and sit with her so that you could go out. There’s no reason why I shouldn’t take some of the washing and do it in my machine. Come to that, I could take it all. Every week.’

Pauline shrugged. ‘Suit yourself.’

‘Yes, well, it’s all very well saying that,’ said Marjorie, working herself up to the required pitch, ‘but if you keep on complaining like this, what am I to say?’

‘I don’t complain.’

‘Maybe not. But everyone else does. You know very well who I mean. I can’t take all this outside interference and just pretend it’s not happening.’

‘I shouldn’t call a husband outside interference.’

For a moment Marjorie thought she was referring to George. Realization of what she actually meant gave her the impetus she needed. ‘I may as well tell you straight out, Pauline, I’m not having Mother to live with us and that’s flat. I’ll do anything else in my power, but not that. No one can make me and I shan’t.’

Pauline made no answer. They ate their tea in almost total silence. Marjorie couldn’t remember ever having felt so uncomfortable in the whole of her life. On the doorstep, as she was leaving, she said, ‘You’d better tell me which evenings you want me, and you can let me know when you want George to come round in the car for the washing.’

‘It makes no difference to me,’ said Pauline. ‘I’m always here.’

Of course, she didn’t phone. Marjorie knew she wouldn’t. And what was the point of going round in the evening when Pauline didn’t want to go out, when she was snug at home with her doctor?

‘We’re not having Mother,’ she said to George. ‘That’s definite. I’ve cleared it all up with Pauline. She’s quite capable of carrying on if I help out a bit.’

‘That’s not what I was told.’

‘It’s what I’m telling you.’ Marjorie hated the way he looked at her these days, with a kind of dull distasteful reproach. ‘She’s done the washing for this week, and next week the laundry’ll do the sheets and the heavy stuff. I thought we might go over on Friday and collect their bits and pieces, put them in my machine.’