Ronald bit into the cake and said after digging a currant from between his front teeth, ‘I came to tell you how I’m going to solve it. I’m leaving the practice.’

‘Couldn’t that be equated with leaving a sinking ship, and with two elderly men you’re fond of still aboard? And how would your departure help the patients?’

‘Without me Uncle Nat and Lou will retire,’ Ronald answered. ‘They’ve always said that in that event they would.’ He paused and glanced away, but Marianne had seen that there were tears in his eyes.

‘I remember the day I joined them,’ he said, collecting himself. ‘How honoured I felt that they’d invited me into the practice they’d shared since they were little more than lads. It wouldn’t be putting it too strongly to say that I looked up to them, Marianne. And to Uncle Nat especially. No need to tell you that I’d never got on with my dad. And if I had to say which brother was more like a father to me, I’d say it was Uncle Nat.’

Marianne hoped her Uncle David hadn’t known it, though he probably had. He had been a highly perceptive man.

‘That doesn’t mean I didn’t love my dad,’ Ronald added. ‘And the way he died – well, I didn’t get the chance to set things right. To tell him how much I admired his achievement even though I left it to my sister to be his right hand in the business.’

Our family hasn’t gone short of people who left it too late to make their peace, thought Marianne.

‘Returning to the gist of the matter,’ said Ronald, ‘I’ve decided to facilitate my elderly partners’ retirement by making a real change in my own life. Diane’s too. I wouldn’t say she’s really had a life, would you?’

Marianne shook her head.

When Sharon was little, Diane used to bring her to Sarah’s Sabbath tea parties, and there the child had lain on the parlour sofa, in a private world where none could reach her. Though Ronald had continued coming to the family gathering, bringing his son, Diane’s accompanying him had suddenly ceased.

From then on Ronald had had to watch his wife become a near-recluse, and it seemed to Marianne now that only for funerals did Diane emerge from the imprisonment she had imposed upon herself.

‘How will your leaving the practice help Diane?’ she asked Ronald. She made herself smile. ‘Not thinking of retiring yourself, are you? – and keeping her company all day.’

‘On the contrary. I’m all set to begin a new career,’ he replied. ‘In New York, as a matter of fact, and Diane is going with me.’

‘What about Sharon?’