We’re living in times when the vocabulary once associated with Hollywood films issues naturally from the mouths of babes and sucklings, Nathan registered. And oh, the desperate lengths this child had gone to to prove her own importance. Why was it necessary for her to prove it? Not just to those around her, but to herself. Bessie’s emaciated appearance wasn’t the only pitiful aspect of her plight.

Laura offered Nathan the biscuit barrel. ‘I know you like shortbread. Don’t be shy!’

‘Don’t bother asking me to have one, Mummy.’

‘I wasn’t going to.’

Bessie looked taken aback and left the room.

A silence followed her departure, then Laura mustered a smile. ‘It’s good to have you here, Uncle Nat.’

‘But you are going to have to change your tactics.’

‘I got the message! Didn’t you notice? But it’s going to take more than that, I’m afraid.’

Laura then relayed to Nathan the psychoanalyst’s shattering pronouncement.

His response was delivered with asperity. ‘How much did it cost you to find out that insecurity is responsible? This isn’t the first time I’ve had cause to think myself in the wrong field of medicine!’

‘If you get Bessie right, I shall think you a miracle worker, and Jake that you’re a witch doctor,’ said Laura.

Chapter Seven

Though for some Aids victims the disease is slow in tightening its grip, Matthew was less fortunate. He had, too, turned a blind eye to the symptoms and was now paying the extra price of his own procrastination.

The truth was that Pete’s infidelity, not his, was responsible. But that knowledge was theirs alone. Matthew would not have it added to his father’s hatred of Pete, who would gladly have swapped places to make amends.

Meanwhile Matthew’s worsening condition continued to hover over the family like an ominous cloud. He had several times been hospitalized, and Pete had abandoned his own career to be with him when such crises arose and take care of him when he was discharged.

Driving home after visiting Matthew, Marianne reflected that love had many faces. Pete was now displaying one of them. But perhaps the only all-enduring and selfless love was that of a mother for her child. Lyn rarely left Matthew’s side.

Arnold, though, had picked himself up and gone on being Sir Arnold Klein, MP, saved from the disgrace he had feared by the press not having done their worst. Given that Matthew was a well-known actor, and the ferrets employed by the tabloids, Arnold must somehow have managed to pull the right strings.