Marianne went to the kitchen to make them some tea and returned to find them sobbing in each other’s arms.

Why was it that shared sorrow united the estranged as nothing else could? She put down the tray and made her exit, the happy evening that had preceded this family tragedy far from her mind.

When she emerged from the building Simon Newman’s Honda was still there.

He got out to open the door for her. ‘I thought I’d hang on, Marianne.’

‘That was thoughtful of you, Simon. I’d intended ringing up the hire car firm my brother uses, but the circumstances were such that it went from my head.’

‘Just as well I did hang on, then. Or you’d now be trudging to the main road in the dark, and I can’t have that!’

A proprietary remark that for Marianne rang a warning bell.

Chapter Four

Matthew’s having Aids was as if a bombshell had hit the family.

‘I can’t believe this has happened to us,’ Shirley said on the phone to Laura.

‘If that’s what you rang up to tell me, Mum, you said it the last time you called me.’

‘You’re not going near him, are you?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘If, God forbid, you got it you could pass it on to the children.’

‘Mum! You don’t get Aids the way you get measles.’

‘Does that mean you are visiting him? And does Pete know yet if he’s got it, too?’

Laura went on mixing the pudding she was making to try to tempt Bessie, the telephone receiver wedged between her ear and her shoulder.

‘The reply to your second question, Mum, is Pete’s tests were positive, but the virus hasn’t attacked him and if he’s lucky it won’t. To answer your first query, of course we’re visiting Matthew. It cheers him up to see us. And Jeremy and A.P. often go round there to play him some of their tapes.’

‘Jeremy and A.P.? You’re joking, I hope.’

‘You hope in vain, Mum.’ Laura was enjoying telling her mother what people like her needed to be told. That an Aids victim wasn’t the modern equivalent of a leper. ‘Janis and Kurt visit Matthew regularly,’ she went on, ‘and Carla and Alan sometimes take little David with them. Matthew says Alan is the sort of rabbi who might have helped him find religion.’

‘It’s a pity he didn’t.’

‘Well, it might perhaps have helped him now,’ Laura replied. ‘But given the number of gay clergymen there are nowadays, religion wouldn’t have stopped Matthew from being gay, and I’m sure that’s what you meant.’

Shirley’s response was, ‘You don’t take Bessie to that den of iniquity, do you?’

Laura hung up on her.

How did a woman like that produce me! But what have I done to my own daughter?