‘It wouldn’t have changed her mind,’ he said, ‘but my children should have known you, should have been made to understand what a wonderful person you are, what wonderful people you both are.’

‘Do you know us?’ Constance asked.

‘Not as I wish I did,’ David replied.

Diana excused herself to attend to dinner, carrying that old, uncovered fury out of the room with her. What right had he now, after all these years, to drag this corpse of remorse into her house, stinking of adulation? No wonder he behaved as if he were to be thrown out at any moment! She would put dinner on the table, and then she would tell him either to stop this grovelling, maudlin act or get out.

The chicken had a rough trip from the oven to the platter. He would just have to stand up like a man and carve the damned thing because in her present state she didn’t trust herself with the implements.

Diana and Constance had always sat across the table from each other, leaving the two heads of the table deserted; so it was natural enough for Diana to have set David’s place in that vacant authority. He assumed it with protesting diffidence, again fearful that he was taking his sister’s place.

‘I want you to carve the bird,’ Diana said.

He did so painstakingly while she opened and poured the wine.

‘Do you remember,’ David asked, ‘how Hugh always butchered the job and then blamed Mother, saying she’d cooked it too long or not long enough?’

Diana had put her stepfather, along with most of her growing up, in the furthest attic of her mind. What she remembered now was David’s resentment of him rather than her own.

‘It’s some time since I’ve done that,’ he said with some satisfaction, finishing his carving.

‘Do you live alone now?’ Diana asked.

‘Yes and no. A few months ago I moved into the student suite so that Mary and Ted and their kids could have the house.’

‘What’s their last name?’

‘Searle,’ David answered, and then he shook his head.

‘Is it in the basement?’ Constance asked.

‘High basement. Nothing sordid. I even have a view of the city.’

‘I wouldn’t like to live in the basement of my own house,’ Constance said.

‘Yes, it’s probably too accurate a place to be,’ David said.

Diana smiled, aware for the first time of what she liked about her brother, when his self-effacement was ironic, as it had been with Hugh. But David had been young then, biding his time.

‘What do you do with yourself?’

‘I garden some and read a little; I go out too much. It reminds me a bit of the war years when everyone my age was gone. Some of the widows are even the same women. I wish I’d never learned to play bridge.’

‘Why do you go?’ Constance asked.