‘Jack thinks you girls were very sheltered, and I suppose, insofar as we could, we did shelter you.’

‘But even from what you privately think is right and wrong?’

‘Not so much that as not admitting I didn’t put as many things in those categories as your mother did. If it had been my job to teach you to brush your teeth, I probably would have talked more about cavities and less about moral obligations.’

‘You used to say, sometimes even to Mother, “Don’t be so quick to judge.”’

‘Well, your mother thought she could spot an embezzler by the colour of his tie and a lecher by the shine of his shoes. I’d hate to admit to you how often she was right.’

‘How do you really feel about Aunt Diana, Daddy?’

‘Much as you feel about your sister, I suppose,’ David answered, ‘loyal, critical, protective, puzzled. But, if you mean how do I feel about her relationship with Constance, it awes me a little. It always has.’

‘You don’t feel there’s anything wrong with it?’

‘No,’ David said, ‘but I’ve known quite a number of gay people. You do in my line of work. It’s my experience that the only people shocked by homosexuals are the people who don’t realize they know any.’

‘That would certainly include me,’ Laura said.

‘Yet you have,’ David said. ‘Do you remember Peter Harkness, for instance?’

‘Peter who used to work with you when we were kids?’

‘That’s right.’

‘But Mother loved Peter. We all did.’

‘He transferred to Toronto. He thought it might be easier in a bigger city,’ David said. ‘One thing I’ve always regretted is that those of us who cared about Peter didn’t make it easier for him here. He never brought his lover with him when he came to see us, and Casper was a delightful man. You would have liked him, too.’

‘Mother would have known then?’

‘Knowing how she felt. …’

‘Couldn’t you talk to her … just the way you’re talking to me?’

‘I should have tried,’ David said. ‘I keep knowing that these are the conversations I should have had with her.’

‘Weren’t you ever shocked?’

‘No, not in the way you mean. I wasn’t a very worldly young man. If I thought anything about homosexuality, I thought only extraordinary people were, like Shakespeare and Michelangelo.’

‘Shakespeare!’