Oh, he had seen Diana. For forty years he had had the furtive courage to go to her on their birthday, a day, like the home free in their childhood games, where none of the rules applied. At those meetings he was too nervous to observe much more than her appearance and manner, ‘photo opportunities’ such occasions were called in the trade, where little real information was exchanged. He had watched her change from a handsome, self-possessed young woman, Dr Diana Crown, obstetrician and gynaecologist, into an increasingly heavy and slow-moving middle-aged woman until now she seemed old, much older than he, having given up at her retirement the habit of expensive clothes and her hairdresser. Now she wore loose smocks with large pockets full of things, trousers and flat, loose shoes to accommodate her arthritic feet. It did give him a brief relief to see her, but it did not excuse how he lived his life on every other day of the year. Or let his children live, accepting the cruel pieties they had been taught. They did not even know they had an aunt who lived in the same city.

David let himself into a blessedly quiet house, folded his coat, put it and his hat into a paper bag in the laundry room, went to his study and picked up the phone.

— 2 —

DIANA, WAKENED BY HER absolute interior clock, touched Constance’s face, and there were the dark worlds of her eyes, always the first territory of day. Not since they’d shared a war over forty years ago had they been alarmed out of sleep. Waking was silent, intimate, even after all these years faintly arousing. Diana was reluctant to leave their bed to confront her singular, upright self. This morning there were autumn messages in her bones. She didn’t achieve a steady gait until she was halfway across the bedroom. It would be a day for her cane, as well as all the other hardware she now required, upper and lower bridges, hearing aid, glasses, and finally the row of pills neatly set by her place at breakfast.

Constance, two years older than Diana, had all her own teeth, could hear birds sing, and only needed glasses for reading, which she had pretty well given up, and for intimate weeding of the garden which she could still do, hunkered down for minutes at a time and able to rise as swiftly and agilely as a young girl. Yet Constance often could not move from their bedroom without Diana’s aid. Particularly in winter, she might forget that it was morning and be putting herself to bed again by the time Diana had finished in the bathroom.

This morning Constance had left their bed, taken off her pyjamas and was standing irresolutely beside clothes put out for her the previous night.

‘Have I had my shower?’

‘No,’ Diana said, smiling.