‘As a matter of fact I’m not. Uncle Nat came here and gave me a talking-to. If my father were alive, he’d never have let me begin taking them, Uncle Nat said. And it’s true. Your Grandfather Smolenksky was also a doctor of the old school. Help yourself to fish, Howard. And I’ve made you some potato salad,’ she said, taking a dishful of it from the refrigerator.

She had garnished it, as she always did, with gherkins and sprigs of watercress, and Howard told her that it was not necessary to go to such trouble on his account.

Ann served him an ample helping and spooned some on to her own plate, her expression bleak. ‘It would be all too easy for me, right now, Howard, to go to no trouble about anything. To let myself get into slipshod ways. I can’t be bothered to make up my face any more, but I force myself to. Not doing so would be the beginning of me going to pieces. I can’t let myself. Your dad needs me.’

Howard nevertheless feared that she might. He’d been too busy licking his own wounds to notice what was happening to his mother. She had always been a smart dresser and had on one of her linen frocks, the brown one, with a brooch pinned to the breast pocket. But beneath the surface appearance she was determined to maintain…

‘I also have to force myself to eat,’ she went on, ‘to keep up my strength. If I didn’t – well, Marianne would have to stop writing her book and come here to look after both me and your dad. Not that she’d stay after one day of looking after him!’

‘Marianne is like a real sister to you, isn’t she?’ Howard said after a pause.

‘Since I’ve never had one – nor a brother – I wouldn’t know. But Marianne is certainly the one in the family I know I can rely on. What I also know is that she wouldn’t stand for what I’m getting from your dad.’

Ann forked some fish into her mouth and put the ketchup bottle closer to Howard. ‘You forgot to drench your food with it! And about your father – well, I wouldn’t say this to anyone else, but I now know what a friend of mine meant when her husband became bedfast and she remarked that an invalid could also be a tyrant. And when their condition is such that you daren’t risk upsetting them… Need I say more, Howard?’

‘Not to me you needn’t.’

‘I can’t wait for the day your dad progresses to the wheelchair the specialist mentioned,’ said Ann.

‘Does he have you running up and downstairs all the time?’

‘What else?’