She returned her mind to the afternoon that lay ahead. Though it would be a pleasant change for the family to get together other than for a funeral, the occasion was in its way a solemn one.

David’s will had instructed that a stained glass window honouring the founders of the Sandberg-Moritz clan be consecrated in a Manchester synagogue, in the presence of every branch of the family tree that had sprung from those roots.

‘Every twig and branch’ was how David had put it, and it was, of course, his estate that had paid for the window. The carrying out of his instruction he had entrusted to his brother.

Marianne turned back the pages of the album to look again at a faded photograph of the two couples whose meeting in Manchester’s old Strangeways ghetto in 1905 would, in 1982, impel their descendants to demonstrate the unity David’s wish required.

Her grandmother, Sarah Sandberg, would say, ‘What’s with the honouring? It’s enough that we are now resting in peace.’ But Sigmund Moritz, whose ego had matched his intellect, would consider it his due, Marianne thought with a smile.

By noon, when she had dressed in her best for the occasion, and her son had not yet arrived from London, she found herself anxiously eyeing the weather, as Uncle Nat was probably doing. A flurry of snowflakes was scudding by the window, and a high wind hurtling around the cottage that in summer had roses around the door.

A reminiscent smile fleetingly lit Marianne’s olive-skinned face, enhancing the gamine appearance lent by her short black hair and her petite figure. It was summer when she and Ralph had moved in, and the picture of their new home, so idyllic was it, had seemed a portent for their ending their days as the proverbial Darby and Joan.

Instead, Marianne, though she was a successful author with little time to brood, was having to come to terms with a personal loneliness she had never before experienced. She had gone from under her parents’ roof to the midst of a hutful of ATS girls. Marriage had followed. This was the first time Marianne had lived alone.

‘Is my outfit OK?’ she would now be asking Ralph, if he were here to look her over. Oh, the simple little things one missed. Since there was only the mirror to tell her, she surveyed the middle-aged woman reflected there and decided that a scarf at the neck of her dark suit would not come amiss.

She selected the blue silk square her son had bought for her at Saks, on one of his frequent trips to New York, and looking in her jewel box for a scarfpin picked up the gold filigree brooch, dented with age, that Sarah Sandberg had brought with her from Russia. Ought I to wear it for the ceremony? And Sarah’s antique ring?