‘Remember the time Jake and Martin were on guard duty at the synagogue on Seder night?’

Marianne saw herself and Laura standing by the hearth. Laura a radiant and seemingly contented woman. And I doubting that she could sustain the role she was playing. A pudgy Bessie clad in blue velvet was hovering beside the table, the dish of bitter herbs in her hands. There, too, the happy teenager Janis was.

Oh the traumas the family has since lived through, privately and together, Marianne reflected. ‘How long ago that seems,’ she said.

‘But Jake is down for the same duty this Passover,’ said Laura. ‘Nothing has changed in that respect.’

‘It’s nice to be where I don’t see the anti-Semitic graffiti I sometimes saw in England,’ Marianne remarked.

‘Removed yourself from a lot of things, haven’t you?’ Laura said lightly.

Marianne was nevertheless aware of an implied reproof. ‘Physically, yes. Mentally and emotionally, no,’ she replied. ‘There’s no escaping from oneself, Laura, as events in your own life must have proved to you.’

‘That makes it no easier for me to understand your doing what you’ve done, Marianne. There’s never an ill wind, though!’ Laura went on with a laugh. ‘Now you’re out of the picture, my mum has come into her own. Lyn says she doesn’t know how she’d get by without her. She’s taken to keeping an eye on Uncle Nat, which he won’t let Leona do. And the Manchester Seder will be at her place this year.’

‘It was never at my place, too much work,’ said Marianne, recovering from her astonishment.

‘Could be my mum is trying to outdo you!’

Or that Shirley was the sort who blossomed when made to feel needed. Whatever, Marianne was pleased that her cousin was at last tasting the rewards of putting others before herself.

‘Mum has also persuaded Arnold to take Lyn on a world cruise,’ said Laura, ‘to help them put time and distance between themselves and their tragedy. She says she wishes she and my dad had done something like that after my brother died.’

‘Let’s hope that going off on their own will do something for their marriage,’ said Marianne.

‘Mum has that in mind too,’ Laura answered. ‘She’s told Arnold that Lyn isn’t to know it wasn’t his idea.’

A behind-the-scenes string-puller in Sarah Sandberg’s class, thought Marianne, which I never was, though in character for Shirley. Possibly Sarah’s matriarchal qualities were dispersed between her three granddaughters, though Leona had yet to prove that she had inherited any of them other than Sarah’s shrewd mind.

‘Tell your mother I wish her well, Laura. And good luck with the jam-making.’

‘Want me to send you a pot?’

‘Why not? I’m still one of the family.’