‘Oh dear,’ she said. She couldn’t think what to add. ‘Oh dear, I’m sorry about that. Is this Marnie?’ She couldn’t remember if there was another daughter. All she could remember about Anna’s relationship with Marnie was its elegantly unconscious symmetries. Anna, constructing the daughter as a failed adult, had defused Marnie’s early sexuality by pressing upon her the role of dowdy, unfulfilled helper; later this had encouraged Marnie to treat her mother as an ageing child whose narcissistic demands were a burden. ‘I’m very sorry to hear that,’ she said again.

‘It was a stroke,’ Marnie said. After a pause, she added: ‘Was there something? I’m quite busy at the moment.’

‘No, no. It doesn’t matter.’

‘Do send your bill, won’t you?’ Marnie said.

Helen Alpert said she would.