Marianne too had been a devoted wife, and maternity was the strongest emotion she had known until she also became a grandmother. The inner conflict between home and career had dogged her while Martin was growing up, but she could not have brought herself to waste her other gift from God: her talent.

Laura’s past work was exhibited in galleries worldwide. Now, she was limiting herself to accepting only those commissions unlikely to disrupt her family life. Gone too was the time when she had impulsively taken off for wherever with her camera to give free rein to her creativity, jaunts which had resulted in some of her best work, including the picture that had set Marianne’s mind on this track, taken on a blustery morning in Cornwall.

On the other side of the room hung a portrait of the man who had changed Laura’s life.

‘I’m surprised that your husband had time to sit for that,’ Marianne remarked, eyeing it.

Laura smiled. ‘He wasn’t my husband then, and if I hadn’t asked him to we’d have gone on treading our separate paths. My work was instrumental in my finding my man.’

But could Laura sustain the sacrifice she had resultantly made? It wasn’t for Marianne to dilute the aura of happiness she radiated by warning her that it might not be possible. That sooner or later she could find herself resenting the domestic stricture that was still to her a novelty.

When Jake and Martin arrived with their sons, Marianne watched Laura’s burly husband greet her with a bear hug that epitomized his warm personality.

Also, thought Marianne, their relationship. In which affection, not romance, seemed predominant. So much so, Marianne had found herself wondering if Jake was for Laura not just a lover, but the father-figure gone from her life when her dad emigrated to Israel. And the domesticity Laura was now enjoying was perhaps the realization of an ideal-family dream not quite destroyed by her own childhood experience.

Whatever, long may Laura’s contentment last, Marianne was thinking when her grandson gave her a wink.

‘You’re looking very toffed-up tonight,’ he remarked.

‘Come and give me a kiss, you scamp!’

The kiss delivered, he added with a grin, since it had been necessary for him to stoop, ‘Am I growing taller, or are you shrinking, Gran?’

‘I haven’t reached the shrinking stage yet, and tall though you are, you’re still not too old for me to spank you!’ Marianne replied.

‘First you’d have to catch me.’

‘And my legs certainly aren’t long enough for that. Another disadvantage of your granny being a titch, A.P., is I can’t reach the top shelves of my kitchen cupboards!’

Bantering with her grandson was one of Marianne’s great pleasures. His dry sense of humour matched her own. What had she said to evoke the serious expression now on his face?