Mary did not mention the fact that David wasn’t gardening. She had begun to take over some of the chores she had before left to him. He saw her eye his jogging suit with some perplexity, but she made no comment about it or his increasing absences from the house. He wasn’t even asked to stay at home in the evening with the children though Mary and Ted occasionally went out. As Christine graduated into going out herself, David assumed she had been given new status in looking after her younger brother and sister. Even she didn’t drop in on him as casually and often as she had.

David took all these signs as positive indications though he felt much more narrowly at home himself. He did not automatically go for the ladder when he spotted a blocked eaves trough and tried not to feel irritated that Ted hadn’t the same alacrity in taking over house maintenance chores that Mary had in the garden. In fact, Ted’s behaviour made David uncomfortable. After those weeks of candidly depending on David for everything from tending the children to being his father confessor, Ted hardly spoke to him now. David supposed Ted was embarrassed by the intimacy of that time, even regretted it now that he’d been able to take over the reins of family life again. The change had taken place almost immediately after Mary came home. Had she had the lack of good sense to tell Ted she’d come home primarily to save the house?

David hadn’t seriously discussed the possibility of selling the house with Ted. Ted was too ambivalent about it already, guiltily grateful about the money it saved him and probably resentful of its hold over Mary. David did not want to make Ted an ally against Mary in such a decision, particularly when it might not come to that. Surely when this period of adjustment passed, David would remain much less involved in their lives but feel less artificially excluded. Time would resolve the awkwardness.

David was surprised one evening to find Ted at his study door. Unlike Mary and the children who had before wandered in and out more or less at will, Ted had respected his father-in-law’s privacy and rarely invaded it, waiting to talk when David went up for dinner or was out of doors.

‘Come in!’ David said, surprised at the false enthusiasm in his voice.

‘David,’ Ted said.

David looked at his son-in-law quizzically, for unlike Jack, Ted had always called David ‘Dad’.

‘Does that sound okay to you?’ Ted asked.

‘If it does to you,’ David said.

‘I thought it might make it easier.’

‘Easier?’

‘It doesn’t,’ Ted said in discouragement. ‘You’ve been like a father to me.’

‘You’ve been like a son,’ David said gently.