Was Jake going to make a habit of working on a Sunday? But since when did Laura think twice about doing so herself?

She returned to two teenagers with contrite expressions on their faces and a jubilant six-year-old.

‘Hurrah!’ Bessie was shouting. ‘I shan’t have to keep my room tidy any more. Agnes and Astrid and Isabella were lovely,’ she listed Doris’s predecessors, ‘but Doris was very strict. She said I’d been neglected, Mummy, and it was time someone knocked me into shape.’

‘Does that mean she smacked you?’

‘No, she just used to say she’d like to.’

‘Jeremy and I won’t let anyone smack you,’ said Janis. ‘You’re our little sister, now.’

‘I’m happy to hear you say that,’ said Laura.

‘But it doesn’t mean we like it,’ Jeremy informed her.

Laura’s heart sank.

‘Are you going to make Janis and me pay for the damage?’ the boy inquired.

The potted plant – a mother-in-law’s tongue Laura’s husband might think aptly named when he met Shirley – had been hurled complete with its china jardinière, now lying shattered on the parquet floor amid a pile of soil and a clump of spiky leaves.

Janis’s slender shape belies her strength! thought Laura. ‘There’s a windowpane broken, too!’ she exclaimed, suddenly noticing it. ‘How did that happen?’

‘They were fighting, Mummy, and Jeremy’s elbow went through it—’

‘If this were South Africa,’ said Jeremy, ‘that kid would be a candidate for the secret police. Are you going to charge us for what we’ve done, or aren’t you, Laura?’

She thought carefully. Trivial though on the surface it seemed, this was the first crisis in her new family life. Her hope was that in time Janis and Jeremy would come to love her. But first she must win their respect.

What would your mother have done? she wanted to ask them. But Laura couldn’t wear a dead woman’s shoes. All she could do was tread carefully in her own. Do her best for that woman’s children.

She gave them a smile. ‘Who do you think should pay for damage? Those responsible for it, or the innocent party? Which in this case is me. If justice really matters to you, it has to be applied to everything. Now help your big brother and sister clear up the mess on the floor, Bessie.’

‘That wouldn’t be justice, she didn’t make the mess,’ said Janis.

‘But I want to help,’ Bessie piped, already on her chubby knees beside the debris.

‘Be careful not to cut your hands on the broken china,’ Laura warned them too late. Bessie was solemnly showing her thumb to Janis and Jeremy.

‘It isn’t as bad as a snakebite,’ was Jeremy’s way of comforting her.

‘But to be sure you don’t get infected from the soil, we’ll give it a suck anyway,’ Janis said before doing so.