‘I’m surprised at you, Marianne,’ she had said. ‘How can a girl with your intelligence find it strange that a son takes over where his father left off? It’s how God arranges things, and what is that child in your arms if not proof of how He arranges the going and coming so a family shouldn’t die out? You were pregnant when your grandfather was taken from us, weren’t you?’

Not that Sarah had required proof to bolster her faith in God, Marianne thought as the memory receded and another replaced it – of a long gone Seder night when she had seen her Uncle Nat bite back a retort after Aunt Rebecca said something to goad him. Oft were the times, too, when Rebecca had pointedly ignored Nathan at family gatherings. But Marianne, though she had conjectured as to the hell their private life must be, had never seen her uncle less than polite to his wife.

It would be he who conducted the Seder in Manchester tonight, with the old-fashioned courtliness that went with his distinguished appearance. Courtliness, though, was just an acquired veneer, Marianne cogitated while lathering her shoulders in the shower, and not in every case did it live side by side with the integrity that had impelled Nathan to maintain his marital obligations to the last.

Marianne’s affection for him had not prohibited her from feeling sorry also for Rebecca. It was not in Nathan’s nature ever to have walked out on her. But why had it taken her the major part of her life to put an end to their miserable existence together?

Possibly her long interlude in Florida had served to restore her bruised spirit. The man she had met there could not but have helped rebuild her ego, since she was now Mrs Pitkin. And Nathan now reading English literature at Manchester University, at the age of seventy-four.

So much for Ronald’s asking me not to let Uncle Nat go to seed! thought Marianne, though for a while it had looked as though he might. A further blow, the death of his friend Lou, had followed Ronald’s departure to the States. But after his divorce he had miraculously put himself back together. As though that final severing with the past had released the man he had always known himself to be.

While drying her hair Marianne envisaged the other women in the family making themselves presentable for Seder night, as she was. Dressing in your best was part of the tradition, along with the eating of the symbolic bitter herbs and hard-boiled eggs. Ann had probably been cooking all day, with Harry breathing down her neck from his wheelchair, and Marianne hoped there would not be fireworks of the emotional kind when the Mancunian branch of the family gathered at their house for the Seder.