With Richard, Diana tried to be, and, because she had to keep her apprehensions for him out of the time she spent with him, she was learning how easy it was, particularly when they had such an absorbing pleasure to share. It was not the same for Constance, even when she was reading to David, though it made her feel useful as the gardening did.

Sometimes Diana wondered how it really was for David to move out of the house of a growing family into this mortal climate. She knew him well enough now to realize that his amiability was nearly automatic. Underneath it, there were other darker moods he kept to himself even more now that he lived here. They had had fewer personal talks in the three months of being under the same roof than when they were awkwardly getting to know each other over the year before. Diana needed her brother so much that she was afraid to discover he might regret what he had done.

Jack and the boys came to bottle the wine and now were preparing Diana for the art of using fresh fruit. Diana noticed that David didn’t join them but chose instead to keep Constance company out of the way of all the noise and activity, but he did go often on his own to that household, and Laura dropped by occasionally on her own, always bringing something, a batch of cookies, jam, a loaf of bread.

Diana would have felt more generous in making sure that father and daughter had time alone together if she weren’t also aware that it gave her an excuse to avoid Laura, who didn’t get over her eager nervousness with both Diana and Constance. Constance would go on insisting, every time she saw Laura, that Laura was pregnant, and Laura hadn’t the knack of turning it into a joke even when David tried to come to her rescue with such advice as, ‘Don’t bite, Snow White!’ Constance and Diana had too much fairy-tale wickedness about them for Laura to think it funny.

But one day Laura arrived when David had gone off on an errand and Constance was resting. Diana had to put herself to the test of inviting Laura in and entertaining her without aid or distraction.

‘Daddy’s very happy here,’ Laura ventured.

Diana braced herself to deal with the inevitable ‘but …’. It didn’t follow. Instead Laura went on to say that he had a real life of his own here, which made him feel useful.

‘It was the right move for Mary and Ted, too,’ Laura continued. ‘They needed to be on their own. But. …’

Here it was then.

‘Did you know Daddy hasn’t seen Mary since he left there?’

‘No, I didn’t,’ Diana said, not admitting that she had suspected as much since David rarely mentioned his younger daughter and never referred to visits with her as he did to Laura and her family.