But this was no time to take issue or defend herself. Jude picked up her woven straw basket and said, ‘Very well, I’ll be on my way then. See you, Shannon.’

Shannon, who was cradling her mother’s frail body like a baby’s, hardly seem to register Jude’s departure. Just before the front door closed behind her, she heard Shannon calling upstairs, ‘Supper in ten minutes, kids!’

The perfect example of the sandwich generation, caught between the aging and the young. Though Jude feared that Shannon Shefford’s sandwich would very soon be reduced to one slice of bread.

As she walked back to Woodside Cottage, she kept asking herself, ‘Why won’t people talk to each other?’ She knew of many situations, usually within families, of conversational lockdowns, which sometimes lasted for decades. And it was her view every complexity in life could be improved by at least talking about it. (Except, of course, for telling a spouse that his or her partner was having an affair. That never helped.)

NINETEEN

‘Is this seat taken?’

Carole looked up at the familiar bulky outline of Adrian Greenford, holding his customary mug of flat white.

‘No, it isn’t,’ she said, draining her Americano, ‘but get them to put that into a takeaway cup. We need to talk outside.’

‘Really? Surely I—?’

By then Carole had left Starbucks.

He found her in one of the seafront shelters facing Fethering Beach. Though full of day trippers in the summer, they were deserted in February. The cold wind sawed through the broken glass of the windows.

He sat down on the paint-denuded wooden seat beside her, a respectable distance away. ‘So, what’s all this about, Carole? Very mysterious.’ His tone was joshing, ready to join in whatever game she was up to.

‘It’s about your wife.’

‘Oh?’ A new alertness came into his manner. ‘What’s Gwyneth done to annoy you?’

‘I’m not sure that she’s done anything to annoy me. But there are things about her behaviour that require some explanation.’

‘Like what?’ he asked, unsure of his ground.

‘My neighbour Jude met some people from Ilkley at the weekend.’

‘Oh,’ said Adrian, as if he knew what was coming.

And Carole told him everything that she had heard from Jude, finishing up by asking, ‘So? Does Gwyneth need to be in a wheelchair or not?’

There was a silence. Then he said, ‘That’s a rather difficult question to answer.’

‘No, it’s not. It’s a perfectly straightforward question. Either she cannot move anywhere without being in a wheelchair, or she can. Which is it, Adrian?’

‘Hm,’ he said. ‘The mind works in strange ways, Carole.’

‘What, are you telling me her disability is all in her head? Shocked into immobility like some hysterical imaginary invalid from a Victorian novel?’