Apparently June did want her. Perhaps she thought the roses were for the living bereaved and not for the dead. She came up to May and put her arms round her, laying her head against her sister’s shoulder in misery and despair. May broke their long silence.

‘Now you know what it’s like to lose him,’ she said.

‘Oh, May, May, don’t be cruel to me now! Don’t hold that against me now. Be kind to me now, I’ve nothing left.’

So May sat beside June, and after the funeral she went back to the house where June had lived with Walter. In saying she had nothing left, June had presumably been referring to emotional rather than material goods. Apart from certain stately homes she had visited on tours, May had never seen anything like the interior of that house.

‘I’m going to retire next month,’ she said, ‘and then I’ll be living in what they call a flatlet – one room and a kitchen.’

Two days later there came a letter from June.

‘Dearest May, Don’t be angry with me for calling you that. You have always been one of my dearest, in spite of what I did and in spite of your hatred of me. I can’t be sorry for what I did because so much happiness came of it for me, but I am truly, deeply, sorry that you were the one to suffer. And now, dear May, I want to try to make up to you for what I did, though I know I can never really do that, not now, not after so long. You said you were going to retire and wouldn’t be living very comfortably. Will you come and live with me? You can have as many rooms in this house as you want, you are welcome to share everything with me. You will know what I mean when I say I feel that would be just. Please make me happy by saying you forgive me and will come. Always your loving sister, June.’

What did the trick was June saying it would be just. Yes, it would be justice if May could now have some of those good things which were hers by right and which June had stolen from her along with her man. She waited a week before replying and then she wrote: ‘Dear June, What you suggest seems a good idea. I have thought about it and I will make my home with you. I have very little personal property, so moving will not be a great headache. Let me know when you want me to come. It is raining again here and very cold. Yours, May.’ There was nothing, however, in the letter about forgiveness.

And yet May, sharing June’s house, was almost prepared to forgive. For she was learning at last what June’s married life had been.

‘You can talk about him if you want to,’ she had said hungrily on their first evening together. ‘If it’s going to relieve your feelings, I don’t mind.’