Sarah would have sorted Harry out in two seconds flat. Nathan and Leona, too. Somehow she had always found a way of dealing with people.

Marianne’s inclination right now was to tell the family to go to hell and let her get on with her work, which between crises she had tried and failed to do.

These were her ruminations on a wet August morning when she had sat staring at the blank paper in her typewriter trying to summon the inspiration that once had come naturally. Had she lost her creative impetus? Would this have gone on for weeks if it were just a bout of writer’s block?

Outside the study window the elm tree was tinged with the hue that bespoke an early autumn. The geraniums in the flower bed looked bedraggled from the heavy rain. And the weather matched Marianne’s mood.

She dialled her son’s number and interrupted his work.

‘What is it, Mum?’ he asked in the crisp tone she herself employed when her concentration was disrupted by a phone call. ‘Can I get back to you?’

‘No, Martin. I need to talk to you now. The family is coming between me and the book I’m writing, to the point where I’ve completely dried up. Has that ever happened to you?’

‘Frequently! But I’m sure it’s a new experience for you. I’m not surprised it’s happened to you now, though. I saw it coming.’

‘Been keeping an eye on me from the distance, have you!’

‘And now Dad’s gone, I’d much prefer to do so at close quarters.’

It was a moving moment for Marianne. Despite his heavy work schedule and his problems with his wife, her son was concerned for her.

‘Which I shall soon be able to do,’ he went on. ‘There’s only one answer to your situation vis-a-vis the family, and I intend to see that you put it into practice. You must remove yourself from where most of the action is. Sell the cottage and come back to London.’

Part Two

1985

Chapter One

By the spring of 1985, the Soviet Union had a new leader whose emergence lent hope to the world, and Marianne had made a trip to Moscow and Leningrad to meet some of her Jewish brethren, for whom oppression remained their lot.

She had returned thinking, There but for the grace of God go I, as she had when she visited the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem and saw the pictorial evidence of what she had escaped.

Since taking her son’s advice she had resumed the travel which, before Ralph’s death, had punctuated her lengthy stints at the typewriter, necessary not just to revitalize her, but to add depth and colour to her novels.

The book she had feared she was unable to write was published the previous year. And in some respects it was for her as if she had never left London.