There was nothing of London left for Constance now but hard chunks of her childhood. Sometimes it could feel to Diana as if she’d stolen it from Constance and had no way of giving it back. They had nothing together but the present, in which Constance lived in a poverty much more debilitating than anything her childhood had prepared her for.

Constance moved from her chair and sat on the floor leaning against Diana’s knees. Her physical nearness closed the gap Diana had been staring into, and she began to listen again to what they did share now, her hand resting lightly on Constance’s shining hair.

David and his family burst in on that Christmas solitude, and for a moment Constance cringed back in her chair. Nearly at once Jack took the boys to the basement to check the wine, and with only David and Laura in the living room Constance recovered herself enough to smile at David, sitting in his own new chair, to study the young woman with him, who sat on the edge of the couch, uneasily cheerful. Diana stood, wanting but unwilling to join the men in the basement because she didn’t like to leave Constance with anyone she didn’t know, even though David was now often familiar to her.

‘You mustn’t give any of us anything,’ Laura said to Diana. ‘We’ve done nothing but eat and drink all day long. Oh, you’ve got one of those, too!’

‘I bought three altogether,’ David confessed.

‘We’ve been listening to it most of the day,’ Diana said.

‘So have we,’ Laura said. ‘Well, as much as you can listen to anything in a family mob. I can’t wait to get ours hooked up at home.’

‘When do you expect your baby?’ Constance asked.

‘Baby?’ Laura repeated. ‘I’m not pregnant. At least, I don’t think I am. It must be the Christmas dinner showing.’

‘Laura’s my niece,’ Diana said, ‘not a patient.’

‘Those great boys who went to the basement just now are my babies,’ Laura said.

‘Grown men?’ Constance asked.

‘Nearly,’ Laura said. ‘I find it hard to believe myself.’

‘You’re like your father,’ Diana said. ‘You don’t know how to age.’

Laura’s blush must be a temptation her sons could rarely resist. It made her look even younger still and somehow old-fashioned, a throwback to their own generation before the war.

Jack and the boys could be heard coming up the basement stairs, and Constance threw Diana a look of frank alarm.

‘It’s all right,’ David assured her. ‘I know it sounds like the troops but it’s only my grandsons.’

‘It’s coming along just fine,’ Jack announced. ‘We couldn’t have done better ourselves. Next year we’ll start soon enough for you to try fresh fruit.’

‘Isn’t that a John Koerner in the back hall?’ Mike asked.

‘Yes,’ Diana said. ‘Are you interested in painting?’