As they compared the virtues of watering cans, trowels and work gloves, as they browsed through books, as they looked at shirts and sweaters, David wondered why he’d never shopped with Patricia and shared the pleasure of speculating on the taste of each of their children and grandchildren. He found he knew a lot more about tools, books and records than he did about clothes. Laura even knew what colours her nieces liked, what kinds of collars they wouldn’t wear. She knew that Christine wanted both to be with-it and at the same time would feel self-conscious in anything too modish while Patsy was a no-nonsense sort about clothes.

When they finally stopped for lunch, David was exhausted not only by the shopping itself but by all he had to learn if he was ever to be able to do this by himself.

‘I need a drink,’ he said. ‘How about you?’

‘I’d rather have coffee,’ Laura said. ‘Otherwise I’d fall asleep at the wheel. But you go ahead. You’ve earned it.’

A gin restored David to the festive mood in which he’d set out.

‘We’ve done rather well so far, don’t you think?’

‘We certainly have,’ Laura said. ‘You know, you amaze me.’

‘That I can survive a morning in a department store? I rather amaze myself.’

‘Not only that,’ Laura said. ‘I always thought of Mother as the one who held the world together.’

‘As she certainly did.’

‘But you know, if she’d been left alone, I don’t think she would have managed half as well as you do.’

‘Don’t fool yourself,’ David said. ‘Right now she’d be on a South American cruise looking over the rich widowers.’

Laura laughed at what was obviously for her a preposterous image of her proper mother.

‘I’m serious,’ David said.

‘Well, you’re wrong. I know she wanted to go, but she’d never have gone without you. She wouldn’t have gone out after dark without you.’

David picked up the menu and was looking at it. ‘Your mother always said she had to choose what we ate all the time; so it was my job when we went out. How do you feel about it?’

‘Not the same way at all,’ Laura answered. ‘At home I eat what Jack and the boys like. I want that extravagant crab salad.’

‘Good for you,’ David said.

He ordered a hot meal for himself so that he wouldn’t have to be bothered with anything more than a snack in the evening.

‘You know,’ Laura began, ‘after we talked about Aunt Diana that night, I was shocked, but, when I talked it over with Jack, I realized I was partly shocked because you weren’t. And he told me I might be shocked by a lot of things you think because there was so much in our family that was never talked about. Do you think that’s true?’