David grew nervous as Wednesday approached. He decided to make a halibut and cheese casserole ahead of time and then realized it would be too awkward to carry on the bus. Never mind, he’d take a cab. He didn’t want in this first attempt to do anything complicated at the last minute nor anything that would make a great mess of his sister’s kitchen. Broccoli and boiling potatoes would be good with the cheese sauce. He could take one of the bottles of plum wine Jack had given him, which would provide a natural opening for him to talk about that family. Dessert? He couldn’t use frosted grapes because of the boycott. Would that surprise Laura, too? Patricia didn’t believe in boycotts or picket lines, either.

David should explain to Laura that it wasn’t that he didn’t take Patricia’s views seriously enough to disagree with her. It was his own views he usually didn’t take seriously enough. But what about dessert? What had they served him? A strudel, he remembered, one of the sort you could get frozen at the store. Ice cream. That might melt. A melon. There were still melons in the store.

On Wednesday afternoon, when David had finished the casserole, he rummaged around in the storeroom and found an old picnic hamper they used to take down to the beach for supper when the girls were small. When everything was assembled, he folded his own chef’s apron in on top, a bit of costume to give him comic courage for his part.

From the moment David walked through the door, he felt a different sort of space open up to him. Diana kissed him, as if casually, on the cheek, and there was a look of real recognition on Constance’s lovely face. The living room seemed in warmer light, or perhaps the Mozart just finishing coloured it, ordering even the fire to dance. Above the mantle a painting by Gordon Smith, which on past evenings David had tried to avoid looking at because of the weight of its images restrained by straight lines as taut as moorings, tonight seemed full of an energy to break free. He knew the room now and no longer had to sense his way around it to avoid those areas which belonged by custom to either Constance or Diana. At first the chair he now thought of as his own had also warned him away from occupancy, but by now whatever ghost of prior claim had been routed.

On his way by cab, he’d stopped at a liquor store; so he carried not only the heavy basket but a paper bag which contained a bottle of gin, a bottle of scotch, and a bottle of Frangelico, a liqueur the flavour of hazelnuts and of lighter sweetness than most.