The sun was warmer now as David walked back down the road, but the dry heat of it on his shoulders was as welcome as a back rub. The chicken and the books weighed a little more heavily before he got back to the house, and he was thirsty.

‘Did I see beer when we were unpacking last night?’ he asked.

‘You did,’ Diana called to him from the living room.

‘Would either of you like anything?’

‘Iced water,’ Constance called.

‘I was about to get us some lunch,’ Diana said, coming into the kitchen. ‘How did you like the town?’

‘I found the library,’ David said, holding up the books.

The fruit salad Diana made for them had a taste so distinctive to David that for a moment he was sitting at his mother’s table.

‘What is it?’ he asked. ‘What did you put in the salad?’

‘Miracle Whip,’ Diana said.

David laughed. It was one of the few arguments about food which he’d had with Patricia, and she had won it, he was embarrassed to remember, by saying that no one with any refinement of taste ate Miracle Whip, that she would be embarrassed to have it in her refrigerator. She either made her own mayonnaise or used Best Foods, and the tangy sweetness of sandwiches and salads had been removed from his palate for over forty years. He couldn’t really say that he liked it any longer, only that its taste recalled his childhood.

‘Don’t you like it?’ Diana asked.

‘It’s delicious,’ he lied, believing it might be again as he got used to it.

‘Constance used to make her own,’ Diana said.

‘Did I?’ Constance asked.

‘Do some tastes make you remember?’ David asked.

‘Smells,’ Constance said, ‘but I think I’ve been away from home all my life, haven’t I?’

‘Yes,’ Diana said.

‘Is home a house or a landscape or a country?’ David asked.

‘All those,’ Constance said. ‘And people. If I’m alone and look at my board and it says, for instance, “lunch”, it’s easier for me to expect to sit down with my mother and sister than to remember it will be Diana there. I remember the forks. I remember the pattern on the dishes, the shape of the teapot. At this table I don’t recognize anything familiar.’

‘There isn’t,’ Diana said. ‘We just got here.’

‘Do you remember those cheese glasses we used to drink orange juice from in the morning?’ David asked his sister.

‘Yes,’ she said smiling, ‘and I swore I’d never save a cheese glass again.’

‘And I wish I still had one,’ David said.

‘Why don’t the birds know we’re here?’ Constance asked.

‘One-way glass,’ David said. ‘They can’t see us.’

‘Would you like to move the table?’ Diana asked.