Mary did not smile or make any polite reply, nor did she offer Diana a chair. Mary stood her ground and waited for Diana’s first real move. Diana sat down on the couch, her back to the view. Mary took a chair in line with the couch, half-turned to the view so that she could look directly at Diana without staring into the light behind her. They studied each other in a growing silence until Mary finally broke.

‘What is it you want?’ she asked, sulky in that first defeat.

‘Just this,’ Diana said.

‘To be in this house?’ Mary demanded.

‘The house isn’t of any concern to me,’ Diana said. ‘You are. You haven’t seen your father in three months, and I think I’m the excuse for it. I haven’t kidnapped him, and I want you to know that you and your husband and children are perfectly welcome to come to see him.’

‘He hasn’t come to see me,’ Mary said.

‘Have you invited him?’

‘Why should he have to be invited into his own house?’

‘Because he doesn’t live here any longer,’ Diana said, and she smiled.

‘You don’t look anything like him,’ Mary said.

‘No,’ Diana agreed, thinking that Mary did look like her father.

‘But you sound like him.’

‘Do I?’ Diana asked.

‘Did he send you?’

‘Heavens no!’ Diana answered cheerfully. ‘He hasn’t even mentioned the fact that he hasn’t seen you in three months. He’s being as pig-headed as you are.’

‘I didn’t think I wanted to meet you,’ Mary said.

‘Well, now you have through no fault of your own.’

‘Over Mother’s dead body.’

‘I don’t think this is about your mother,’ Diana said, ‘or me.’

‘Isn’t it?’ Mary asked.

‘Life goes on over people’s dead bodies, Mary, soon over the likes of your father and me as well.’

‘He might as well be dead!’ Mary burst out.

‘Are you still such a child?’ Diana asked, almost gently.

‘I’m his child. How can he forget that?’ Mary demanded. ‘Just forget it?’

‘You seem to have forgotten he’s your father.’

‘Tit for tat,’ Mary said, but in that sulkiness was a glimmer of self-consciousness.

Diana wanted to shout at her, ‘Don’t be such a silly little fool!’ but any impatience now would ruin whatever little good she had done. She was here to remove excuses, not to give Mary any more. Then Diana saw the easy tears welling up in those eyes so like her father’s.

‘I won’t stay for that,’ Diana said.