‘Am I to think that having Mary and the three children on my hands is a real option?’ he asked.

‘I suppose it’s one of them,’ Diana said, ‘if you want it to be.’

‘I don’t, but unlike that young wretch I don’t believe even a father has a right to desert a woman with three dependent children. When it comes down to that, what I want hasn’t much to do with it.’

Diana saw David burdened with the guilt of all the men who had left women and children to fend inadequately for themselves, whether the men got themselves killed on the road as their father had, or were wracked up in a foreign war as Hugh had been, or simply wandered off in pursuit of their own happiness as Ted contemplated. For three generations David had been trying to put it right.

She was sorry to suspect that David was part of the problem between Ted and Mary, and that this might be why he so readily assumed he’d have to be the solution. She didn’t know them. Who was she to argue him out of his sense of responsibility when she had nothing but the worst of motives, needing him to be free enough only to be saddled with more of her needs and Constance’s? He needed Diana to be just what she was telling him he should be, a disinterested listener.

‘Why am I putting an early end to all our fun?’ he asked.

‘Because that isn’t all we share,’ Diana said. ‘Anyway it isn’t over. It’s just beginning.’

Diana felt so strengthened by what they together had been able to make happen that she was sure it could go on, in any number of forms, however they came about.

‘Where are we going now?’ Constance asked.

‘Home,’ Diana said, pointing to the word on Constance’s memory board.

Constance frowned. Home, for the moment, was nothing but a word, written in Diana’s difficult hand.

Ben stood on the other side of the barrier waiting for them as David pushed the luggage and Constance pushed Diana through the automatic glazed glass doors.

‘I’ve got the car right outside,’ Ben said, taking the luggage from his grandfather.

When everyone was settled in the car, David asked, ‘So how is everyone?’

‘Well, okay, I guess,’ Ben said, ‘except that Aunt Mary seems to have moved in with us.’

‘With the children?’ David asked.

‘No, they’re still at home with Uncle Ted. Dad doesn’t seem to think it’s that serious. As a matter of fact, he thinks it’s funny.’

‘But who’s looking after the children?’ David asked.

‘Uncle Ted is … and making heavy weather of it, I can tell you. He can’t wait to have you come home!’

‘That’s a new wrinkle,’ Diana said.