‘There is such a thing as a dictionary,’ Marianne replied lightly. Not for anything would she be the one to tell him what his mother was implying.

Why couldn’t Martin’s marrying-out have proceeded as smoothly as had his partner’s? But Andy and Rhoda had no children. And such was Rhoda’s devotion to her husband, if he had wished it she would doubtless have espoused Judaism. A less painful decision for a Protestant perhaps than for a Catholic, since Catholicism, like Judaism, was a way of life.

‘In my opinion, Gran, my mum is turning into a religious maniac,’ A.P. interjected into Marianne’s ruminating.

Marianne’s opinion, too. She nevertheless eyed her grandson sternly. ‘Now you listen to me, A.P. You are never to speak that way of your mother again.’

‘That won’t stop me from thinking it.’

‘But some thoughts are better kept to ourselves, A.P. That way they don’t hurt people we love.’

Marianne could have added that this was a lesson she herself had had to learn. As a teenager she had been too outspoken for her own good.

‘How can my telling you what I think hurt my mum?’ A.P. countered. ‘You’re not a blab-mouth.’

‘But you want me to take sides with you against your mother,’ Marianne answered, ‘and that is painful for me.’

‘Does that mean you’d rather I didn’t tell you my troubles?’

Marianne masked her distress with a smile. He was too young to be beset by troubles. But my refusing to listen won’t cause them to go away. Instead he would bottle them up.

‘When you have things to get off your chest, by all means come to me,’ she said kindly. ‘But should they concern your parents you must expect me to remain neutral.’

‘I’m pig-in-the-middle, though, aren’t I?’

Marianne remained in the alcove that had allowed them to talk privately, watching A.P. join the youngsters by the hearth.

Shirley and Laura were gone from the room, doubtless to the kitchen, and Martin and Jake checking the table, making sure there was a Haggadah beside each place, a nostalgic reminder for Marianne of every Seder she had attended.

The atmosphere too was the same, born of long tradition, the air redolent of cinnamon and apple pounded with walnuts to a paste, to symbolize the mortar spread by the Children of Israel in their years of enslavement. Marianne could remember a Seder night of her youth when something had gone wrong with her grandmother’s matzo balls and jokes were made about Sarah providing not just the mortar, but the bricks.