Ann was slicing pickled cucumber when Harry called stridently, ‘Are we getting a second course? If not, my nursemaid can put me to bed and Grace can be said without me. I’m not giving thanks to God for a lousy meal I didn’t get!’

‘Your nursemaid is going on strike!’ Ann heard herself retort.

‘About time, too,’ Leona told her. ‘You look dead beat, and who could be surprised.’

‘Would you mind serving up the dinner, Leona? My legs seem to have turned to jelly.’

‘Probably from the shock of what you just said to Harry.’

‘I didn’t mean to—’

‘But Harry hasn’t slumped to the carpet, has he? He’s still sitting in his wheelchair – and enjoying the sympathetic glances that woman is giving him!’ Leona observed through the hatch. ‘You should put your foot down with him more often, Ann, and if he has another stroke it’ll be his fault, not yours.’

‘Could you be that callous with Frank?’

‘I would surely have hastened his end long before now! Go back to the table, Ann, and send Frank to help me.’

Frank’s first words when he entered the kitchen were, ‘Why did you have to embarrass poor Sybil the way you did?’

‘You’re as gullible as my dad, Frank. And if I don’t prise Sybil out of his life, it will be poor Nathan.’

‘You’re behaving like a jealous daughter, Leona. I wouldn’t have expected it of you.’

‘If that’s how you interpret my concern for my father, then you’ve lived with me for more years than I care to count without really knowing me,’ she replied.

‘More years than you care to count, eh?’

‘Hand me the oven cloth, will you? And if you’re going to look for double entendre in everything I say, an experienced lawyer like you won’t find it difficult to twist my words.’

Frank watched Leona take one of Ann’s aprons from a hook and put it on, lest she splash gravy on her dress. A good housekeeper she wasn’t, but like all Sarah Sandberg’s granddaughters and great-granddaughters, she never dished up food minus an apron. It was a family joke among the men, but incapable now of causing Frank to smile.

‘Would you mind telling me what’s been going on in here?’ he asked while she hastily tied the apron strings in a bow. ‘What did you say to Ann to make her suddenly turn on Harry?’

‘What did I say to her? A better question, Frank, would be why hasn’t she blown her top a lot sooner?’

‘And the answer is that she loves him. If I may draw a logical conclusion from that, you wouldn’t stand for such behaviour from me, no matter how ill I was.’

Had he heard Leona’s words to Ann on the subject? No, he couldn’t have, with the chit-chat going on around him in the dining room.

‘If that’s your oblique way of saying you think I no longer love you, Frank—’