‘If metal touches it,’ said Peter Elsworthy, ‘it will shrivel and die. In some ways, you see, it’s a tender plant.’

Mop had banged out of the room. Lady Elsworthy was once more bent over her gift, holding the vessel and placing it in a suitable position where it was neither too light nor too cold. From the garden I could hear the drone of the lawn mower, plied by Mr Felton. Those other two had moved a little away from the window, away from the broad shaft of sunshine in which we had found them bathed. As Peter Elsworthy spoke of the tender plant, I saw his eyes meet Mrs Felton’s and there passed between them a glance, mysterious, beyond my comprehension, years away from anything I knew. His face became soft and strange. I wanted to giggle as I sometimes giggled in the cinema, but I knew better than to do so there, and I went away and giggled by myself in the garden, saying, ‘Soppy, soppy!’ and kicking at a stone.

But I wasn’t alone. Mr Felton came pushing the lawn mower up behind me. He used to sweat in the heat and his face was red and wet like the middle of a joint of beef when the brown part had been carved off. A grandfather rather than a father, I thought him.

‘What’s soppy, my old Margarine? Mind out of my way or I’ll cut your tail off.’

It was August and the season had begun, so on Sunday afternoons he would take the shotgun he kept hanging in the kitchen and go out after rabbits. I believe he did this less from a desire to eat rabbit flesh than from a need to keep in with the Elsworthys who shot every unprotected thing that flew or scuttled. But he was a poor shot and I used to feel relieved when he came back empty-handed. On Sunday evenings he drove away to London.

‘Poor old Daddy back to the grindstone,’ he would say. ‘Take care of yourself, my old Mop.’ And to me, with wit, ‘Don’t melt away in all this sunshine, Margarine.’

That Sunday Mrs Felton made him promise to bring a dozen more bottles of wine when he returned the following weekend.

‘Reinforcements for my vinegar mother.’

‘It’s stupid wasting wine to make it into vinegar,’ said Mop. I wondered why she used to hover so nervously about her parents at this leave-taking time, watching them both, her fists clenched. Now I know it was because, although she was rude to them and seemed not to care for them, she longed desperately to see them exchange some demonstration of affection greater than Mrs Felton’s apathetic lifting of her cheek and the hungry peck Mr Felton deposited upon it. But she waited in vain, and when the car had gone would burst into a seemingly inexplicable display of ill temper or sulks.

So another week began, a week in which our habits, until then routine and placid, were to change.