If Mary could only learn not to project her own doubts and self-criticism on to other people and then fight a war as if it weren’t inside herself, some real emotional progress might be made. But perhaps she was gaining some ground. Patricia as a ghost might be more help to her daughter than she had been as an often exasperated parent. And to be fair to Mary, Patricia had crowded her sometimes unnecessarily. Patricia didn’t think anyone had the right to take up more emotional space than other people, and she set her will against the fact that some people just do. Mary always had taken more space, but not simply in anger. Her amusement and delight were more contagious, and what Patricia called ‘showing off’ was often in Mary simply irrepressible high spirits, without which the family would been the poorer.

All Mary needed now was to know she’d made up her own mind, and David didn’t expect either of his daughters to want revolutions around Christmas, if only to keep peace with their own children, set in the conservative greed of the season.

David was writing a few Christmas notes to old friends, a task he hadn’t been up to the year before. It must have been Laura who had notified everyone of Patricia’s death. When he found himself wanting to write about his sister, he hesitated, for most of the people they had known weren’t aware that he had a sister, and he was incapable of any explanation for her sudden reappearance in his life. Yet not to mention her was a part of that past behaviour he wanted to be rid of. So he did mention her, and Constance, too, and how they spent evenings together being comic, old crocks. Let people think what they’d think.

Christine drifted in eating an apple.

‘Is school out already?’ David asked.

‘It’s four o’clock,’ Christine said.

‘So it is.’

‘No one knows what to get you for Christmas,’ Christine announced. ‘Granny always just told them, and Mom said she couldn’t just rummage around in your drawers to see if you need new socks or whatever. Aunt Laura was shocked you did your own laundry.’

‘Why should she be?’ David asked.

‘Well, she just thought that was the way Mother would know, you know?’

‘So you’ve been sent down to rummage?’

‘Not exactly. People always ask us what we want. Why shouldn’t adults just say?’

‘It’s another place where the rules change. Greed is only attractive in children.’

‘We’re not supposed to be greedy?’ Christine protested, shocked.

‘No, of course you’re not, but you are allowed to ask for what you want.’

‘Not for what you really want,’ Christine said.

‘What do you really want, Chrissie?’