‘It’s a long time ago,’ David said. ‘It was very personal … and convoluted, and, since neither of them would. …There was nothing I could do about it.’

‘You haven’t told Mary yet?’

‘It’s a peculiar thing to have to explain,’ David said.

‘Should we ask her to dinner?’

‘Give us all a bit more time to get used to the idea,’ David said.

‘What’s she like?’ Mike asked.

David’s instinct was to describe Diana as a girl, but that would make no sense when they must be prepared to meet the old woman who was now his sister.

‘She’s quite lame and heavy and a bit deaf,’ he began. ‘She can be fairly abrupt, but she likes to laugh. I’m quite sure she’d take to the two of you.’

David looked at his two grandsons, so clearly brothers, Ben the better-looking of the two, more substantial and pulled together than his younger brother Mike, who clowned away a basic shyness, a sensitivity he had yet to find any use for. For a moment it all seemed quite simple.

As David took his leave that evening, accepting a ride frankly forced on him by Ben, he said to Laura, ‘I hope I haven’t upset you.’

‘Not at all,’ Laura reassured him, ‘but you’ve made me very curious.’

‘Will it upset Mary, do you think?’

Laura looked thoughtful. ‘Perhaps it would be better to tell her by herself.’

Ben drove cautiously along the narrow residential street around the obstacles of parked cars and large piles of raked leaves in a neighbourhood planned before anyone had projected three-car families or rental accommodation in the basements and attics of what used to be one-family dwellings.

‘Settling in at the university all right, are you?’ David asked.

‘I guess so,’ Ben said. ‘Dad told me before I went out there that I was expecting too much of the place.’

‘And you were?’

‘In a way. It isn’t nearly as hard as I expected it to be. The only real difference from high school is that nobody gives a damn whether you work or not.’

‘Enjoy that,’ David said. ‘They will care again once they’re paying you to do it.’

‘By the time I get out, I hope there’s someone around who can pay me. Do you think it’s true what they say, that the party’s over for the west?’

‘For British Columbia?’

‘No, the western world.’

‘Ah Ben, I’ve never pretended to understand economics. So many of the theories have always sounded to me like excuses for unwise or unjust spending, all round the world. The wonder to me is that the whole thing hasn’t come down like a pack of cards long ago.’

‘I guess we’re closer to it than we ever were,’ Ben said.