‘But this isn’t a simple, black and white matter, Marianne. Well, not for me. I’m worried about Laura.’ He paused before adding, ‘I’ve also learned that she has a mind of her own.’

‘How long did it take you to find that out?’

‘I suspected it before I married her—’

‘Suspected it? You’re making a woman’s having a mind of her own sound like a criminal trait in her character! In the eighties, there are few women who don’t, and why the heck shouldn’t they have?’

‘In principle I agree. But in practice – well, I expect that Laura also had her suspicions about me. That I’m the kind she now knows I am. On the whole, she doesn’t seem to be having the trouble coping with me that I’m having coping with her. And frankly – well, I’m dreading the time when Janis tells us she intends living with a boyfriend, and I say, “The hell you do!” and Laura sides with Janis.’

‘Has Janis got a steady boyfriend?’

‘No, but I can see it coming.’

Jake finished his sherry and Marianne refilled his glass, trying to make sense of the man he said he was having married a single woman with a child.

‘I forgave Laura for stepping off the straight and narrow once,’ he said as if he had divined Marianne’s thoughts, ‘since she did it in order to be a mother. And I adore Bessie.’

Once? As for others of her generation, sleeping with whomever you fancied before settling down had been for Laura the norm, and she would be the opposite of censorious if her and Jake’s children did what was increasingly the norm. The main preoccupation of many parents of teenage daughters, nowadays, was to make sure they were on the pill.

Jake, though, was as if set in amber. What was Laura doing married to this nice kind man who was in some respects a throwback to the Victorian husband and father? And of course Laura had suspected it! Why else had she kept her randy past to herself?

There was, however, no such thing as starting out with a clean slate, whatever the venture. What you thought you had put behind you was liable to reappear unexpectedly before you, and down you went.

And when the venture was marriage…

Jake finally got around to telling Marianne the reason for his visit. ‘I want Laura to see a gynaecologist, but she’s refused to do so.’ He paused before saying, ‘You see, we’ve been trying to have a child—’

‘Laura’s age could account for her not conceiving,’ Marianne replied.

‘That’s what I keep telling her, and that there could be treatment available. The only answer I get from her, Marianne, is that her not getting pregnant is God’s will.’

To Marianne, that sounded like Sarah Sandberg. It certainly wasn’t Laura.