They boarded the plane easily. Obviously for Constance, walking out across the tarmac and climbing the steps into the plane was less disorienting than being funnelled into it by windowless corridor. It was an experience that could snag memories far enough back to be accessible to her and reassure her that she understood what she was doing.

They had settled as they had on the way down, Constance at the window, David on the aisle, Diana comfortably centred between them. She was not really even apprehensive about the Vancouver airport where Ben would be waiting beyond the customs barrier to help David with the luggage.

‘I find I’m suddenly dreading going home,’ David said.

‘Why?’ Diana asked, surprised at the energy in his statement.

‘I’ve left it all so easily behind,’ David said. ‘Before we left, I though I’d brood about it, burden you with it, but until now it’s hardly crossed my mind.’

‘What is it about Mary?’ Diana asked, feeling by now so comfortable with her brother that nothing he might say about his daughter would trouble her.

‘She’s so taken up with her own problems, she doesn’t see how many she’s creating around her which are going to become hers as well,’ David said, ‘or they may already have by now. Jack told me Ted was talking about leaving her.’

Diana heard the shock and anger in David’s voice. She didn’t say anything. She waited.

‘I don’t understand that,’ David said after a moment. ‘What do young people these days think they mean by “for better or worse, for richer or poorer”?’

‘Girly woods,’ Constance said.

Diana grinned at her. David looked puzzled.

‘“With all my girly woods I thee endow,”’ Constance elaborated with a satisfied chuckle.

‘A young doctor friend of ours,’ Diana explained, ‘married an English girl at the end of the war. He was so nervous, that’s the vow he took.’

This irreverent diversion, so many of which David enjoyed, threw him uncomfortably off balance, and, though Diana was sorry for him, she thought Constance’s war against anyone inclined to pompous piety a good one.

‘Constance,’ David demanded, ‘why are you so set against marriage when you have been virtually married for forty years?’

‘I have?’ Constance asked. ‘Oh, surely not. To whom?’

Diana laughed, shaking her head. ‘Must the whole world live on your terms, D?’

‘They’re not my terms,’ David said with some irritation. ‘Ted wasn’t forced to marry Mary, quite the contrary. She had plenty of young men to choose from, and she took her time.’

‘He won a prize,’ Diana mused. ‘So he thinks he has a right to be happy.’

‘Happiness is beside the point,’ Constance said, ‘except for Americans.’