‘I can’t stand big parties,’ David said, ‘I can’t hear well enough to carry on an intelligible conversation. By now, all I can hear is my own and other people’s hearing aids setting off their distress signals all over the room, like buoys in the bay: hard, inanimate object here, a threat to all navigation.’

‘You always used to be quite cheerful about them.’

‘I liked watching your mother have a good time.’

‘Sue says you’ve even stopped accepting invitations for bridge.’

‘Loyal as Sue is to your mother’s memory, she can’t resist a bit of match-making, and I’m well past that.’

‘Well, playing an evening’s bridge occasionally certainly isn’t grounds for a shotgun wedding,’ Mary said.

‘At my age, it just might be. But here’s another confession: I loathe bridge.’

‘Do you mean to say you let Mother drag you all those years. …’

‘She didn’t have to drag,’ David corrected. ‘I liked to see her doing what she enjoyed. She went with me to a lot of parties with my CBC cronies agreeably enough, which she wouldn’t have gone to by choice. You do those things; the social world is set up for couples.’

‘And I think that’s why Aunt Sue wants to fix you up with a nice widow, not to marry you off. She thinks you’re in danger of simply falling through the cracks of old age.’

‘She always did turn a good phrase. But she should try it before she knocks it.’

‘You’re perfectly happy?’ Mary asked.

‘That’s a tall order,’ David said. ‘Is anyone?’

‘But you’re not lonely, missing old friends?’

‘No,’ David said.

‘I told her you were seeing a lot of your sister,’ Mary said in a neutral tone.

David went on cutting paper to wrap a shirt for Ted which Mary had already approved.

‘She said, “How awkward!”, and hoped no one else in the family was being exposed.’

David gave the scissors a final, violent snap.

‘You don’t really like Aunt Sue, do you?’ Mary asked.

‘She was your mother’s oldest friend.’

‘Didn’t you have any opinions of your own?’

Finally David put the scissors down and with great effort at self-control turned to his younger daughter.

‘You don’t need to bait me to have this conversation, you know. I’m not willing to talk about Diana through Sue’s eyes or even your mother’s. The only reason you haven’t been “exposed” as Sue calls it is that you’ve made it perfectly clear you don’t want to meet Diana or know anything about her. And no, I don’t like Sue when she’s reinforcing other people’s prejudices, whether your mother’s or your own.’

‘I don’t much like her either,’ Mary said.

‘Then why do you listen to her when you won’t listen to me?’