‘When,’ said Marianne, ‘were you ever interested in anyone but yourself?’

‘Would you two mind cutting the dramatics?’ Harry interceded. ‘I’d like to hear what my son has to say.’

Howard, his freckled face crumpled with distress, sat down on a decorative but uncomfortable chaise longue. ‘What is there to say, Dad, that you can’t see for yourself?’

The finality of his tone was such that Harry was momentarily speechless and Ann rummaged in her handbag for her pill box. Harry then snatched it from her, brandished it in the air and shouted, ‘See what you’ve done to your mother, Howard!’

‘But your saying so helps nobody,’ Nathan informed him. ‘What’s required is a cool head and the right advice. What are Howard’s chances of getting custody of Ben?’ he asked Leona.

‘Off the top of my head, Dad, I can’t answer that. I’ll discuss it with Frank when I get home.’

Howard cleared his throat. ‘Thanks, but it won’t be necessary.’

‘What does that mean?’ Harry demanded.

Marianne saw a vein on his forehead throbbing with anger and told him to calm down.

‘You getting yourself into a state isn’t going to change anything,’ said Howard.

‘What is there to change! Ben is my grandson. Named after my father, whom he also looks like. He doesn’t belong where he now is!’

‘I agree.’

‘Well that’s something!’

‘But I’m nevertheless not going to subject him to a tug-o’war between his mum and his dad.’

‘Does that mean you’re going to let him be brought up by Germans?’

Harry’s sallow complexion was now a purplish hue and Marianne prickled with alarm when she saw him tug at his shirt collar. A moment later he had slumped to the floor and Nathan was taking command of the situation.

Her brother’s having a stroke was for Marianne like family history repeating itself. A seizure had cut down their father, and in similar circumstances.

Much about Harry reminded her of her father: the acumen and the tenacity that had enabled Ben Klein to build a sizeable business from small beginnings; the integrity for which he was throughout his life respected; but most of all the devotion that made him the archetypal family man and the more vulnerable to the blows children are liable to deal their parents.

When Nathan rose from examining Harry and instructed Leona to phone for an ambulance, Marianne had looked at her brother’s face and seen again her father’s twisted grimace twenty-one years earlier – distress that climaxed with a family quarrel responsible then as it was now.

An hour later she was seated in a hospital waiting room, her arm around Ann’s shoulders. Leona had called Frank and he too was there sharing the tension, he and Leona flanking Howard.