‘Did Granddad used to reach things down for you?’ he asked quietly.

‘If he happened to be at home when I needed something from up there. When we lived in the cottage in Cheshire, though, the problem didn’t arise.’

‘I remember it having low ceilings.’

‘So it couldn’t have had high cupboards,’ said Marianne with a laugh. ‘But now I’m back in my lofty flat – well, don’t tell your dad, but last week I fell off my ladder while getting down the cast-iron saucepan I use for making carrot and ginger jam for the Passover.’

‘I’m surprised you had the strength to lift the pan,’ said A.P.

‘I’m by no means as fragile as I look,’ Marianne assured him, ‘and the special jam is the only culinary achievement I’m known for in the family. This is the first year I won’t be in Manchester to dole out the jars personally, and yesterday I put a carton of jars on the train and called Leona to ask her to collect it and do the distributing for me. I can’t have our relatives up north thinking that my non-appearance at their Seder means I don’t care about them any more.’

‘What an odd mixture you are!’ said her grandson.

And how astute an observation from a boy of his age, since it was Marianne’s assessment of herself.

‘One day you’re the celebrity doing book-signings and the next you’re putting jars of jam on the train,’ he capped it, ‘like your gran sometimes mailed you a tin of strudel.’

‘Who told you about that?’

‘My dad once said it was the only time he ever got homemade cake.’

One of Sarah’s many virtues was her thoughtfulness for others, Marianne recalled. Could Marianne credit herself with having inherited that trait? On balance, yes. And it has to be the bits of Sarah I recognize in myself that account for my incongruities of character.

‘I’ve got a jar of the jam in my car, for you and your dad to take home,’ she said to A.P.

‘Good, I’ll have some for breakfast tomorrow, on the matzos he and I bought in Golders Green. If Mum tries to stop me from having a Passover breakfast, there’ll just have to be another row.’

‘I don’t like the sound of that,’ said Marianne.

‘But she isn’t going to like it,’ A.P. went on. ‘Believe it or not, I overheard Mum accusing Dad of trying to convert me to his religion. She didn’t want me to come here tonight.’

Marianne did believe it. Martin’s relationship with his wife was becoming increasingly acrimonious.

‘She said he was doing it insidiously,’ A.P. relayed, ‘and I wasn’t sure what she meant.’