Diana had certainly felt an alien in her own family long before her sister-in-law had managed to alienate her. But it had never seemed to Diana a real family so much as an accidental variety of needs under the same roof. Her mother had never attempted to unite them. She hadn’t either the vision or the skill. In her last years the only effort she made was to keep them all apart, out of each other’s way. If their mother had wanted or needed their reconciliation, would David have felt compelled to confront his wife’s bigotry? Would Diana have felt obliged to forgive her? For families to get along, surely there had to be at least one person who believed it not only possible but important. Well, Jill’s mother had, and it produced nothing but farcical holidays until she died, and the siblings fell apart at the funeral. At their mother’s funeral, David and Diana were as decorous with each other as they were on their birthdays, and their half-brothers were such strangers to them that they all were no more than embarrassed to intrude on each other’s grief. All they had in common was the burden they had been to a woman who had done the best she could under the circumstances. They had never been a family.

Yet Diana said to Jill, ‘He’s my brother,’ as if it was as natural for her to live with him again as it felt, as if kinship explained it.

‘You don’t take to Jill, do you?’ Diana asked her brother.

‘I don’t really know her yet,’ David said. ‘I suspect she doesn’t take to me.’

‘She lived here with us years ago,’ Diana said.

‘Where I am now?’ David asked. ‘Well, no wonder.’

‘She’s glad you’re here. It’s not something she could have done, but she does everything she can.’

If David had needed a longer explanation, Diana would have given it to him, but he shied away from any conversation which might make him seem intrusive.

Fortunately, he was at ease with the only other familiar of the house, young Richard, who had no prior claims or prejudices for David to deal with. Diana suspected that David had taken advice from Mike in the pictures he chose to eliminate from the collection, for among them were two of Richard’s favourites which he carried off for his new room.

‘I’d like to give his father a thrashing!’ David said, the violence in his tone a surprise to Diana.

‘His stepfather,’ she corrected.

‘All the better!’ David said. ‘I could act out all my own adolescent fantasies. And Hugh never even threatened to throw me out.’

‘You didn’t present any hard problems for him,’ Diana said.

‘What’s the hard problem in this?’ David demanded. ‘The boy’s dying! The only trouble he’ll be to them in a few months is to their consciences.’