When she boarded the plane which would transport her to her paradise island, it was without regrets. Gone were the shackles she had one way and another worn since her twenties, the more so since her grandmother’s death. Though it had always been within her power to detach herself, it had not seriously entered her head to do so until events impelled her to take the step she had.

Impossible to detach, though, was her emotional tie with the family. Her departure from their midst had stunned her relatives and it was not without an occasional pang of guilt that she settled down to her blissful new life. From time to time she would wonder how those who had for so long relied upon her were coping in her absence, and find it necessary to brush that thought aside.

Initially, she and Simon lived in a rented apartment. By the spring of 1989 they were installed in a rambling villa overlooking Elbow Beach, its verandah festooned with greenery and spacious enough for them to work at either end of a long table, their preference though the accommodation allowed a study for each of them.

‘Want me to get it, hon?’ Simon asked one morning when the telephone shrilled persistently inside the house.

Marianne rose and stepped over the extended lead from her electric typewriter. ‘I will, your deadline is sooner than mine. We must get some sockets fixed out here for our typewriter plugs, Simon, before we trip headlong on the way into the house.’

‘How about having a phone out here?’

‘Not likely!’ Marianne replied. ‘One of us would snatch up the receiver the minute it rang, like I used to in England when someone interrupted my work. This way, I manage to shut it out and people don’t usually hang on too long.’

Marianne hastened to the hall to end the shrilling and was due for a surprise.

‘How nice to hear your voice, Laura,’ she said warmly, though assailed by apprehension. The days when she had received panic calls from the family were over and her contact with them maintained by letter. ‘Is something wrong?’

‘Well, it’s ages since we heard from Janis, but I didn’t ring up to tell you that. I’d like the recipe for your Passover jam.’

The airy, flagstoned hall was not yet furnished, work had come first for both Simon and Marianne. She carried the telephone from a window ledge to the foot of the stairs and sat down, her expression amused.

‘Only a millionaire’s wife would call Bermuda from England to get a recipe!’ she said to Laura after supplying it.

‘Probably. But why should the family be deprived of the jam you used to make for them, just because you’re not here any more? We shall miss you at the Seder, Marianne.’

‘And I shall miss all of you.’