A few days had passed since Jake’s visit and when they spoke on the phone, Marianne had detected a note of rebuke in his voice. As if she ought to have done immediately what he had asked of her. Gone at it like a bull at a gate.

More proof that he doesn’t know his wife, she thought while threading her way between two patients in wheelchairs in the hospital corridor. Laura’s reaction to learning Jake had consulted Marianne would more likely than not have been to lose her temper with both, then stick her head back in the sand.

Unlike me, Laura’s never been a realist, Marianne reflected, or she wouldn’t have married a man from whom she thought it necessary to hide the life she lived before she met him.

Jake was seated beside Laura when Marianne entered the ward, the scent of the flowers he had brought her overpowering the antiseptic permeating the air.

‘I’ve been telling Laura to let this be a lesson to her,’ he said.

‘But I am in no mood to be lectured,’ said Laura. ‘What I’d like, Jake, is to talk woman-talk with Marianne.’

‘In that case I’ll let the two of you get on with it and take the opportunity to get myself some coffee.’

‘They make good coffee at that pastry shop on South End Green,’ Laura told him. ‘I used to go there with my friends before I knew you.’

Jake turned to Marianne. ‘Believe it or not, I’ve yet to meet any of Laura’s old friends. I suggested we give a party for them. For some reason Laura, who loves parties, hasn’t got around to it.’

Was that tinged with innuendo? Marianne could not be sure, and a moment later Jake was gone.

‘Even a man you love can be tiresome in the circumstances I’m now in!’ Laura exclaimed. ‘Jake’s been going on and on at me because I didn’t take his advice.’

‘About what?’ Marianne inquired, po-faced.

She then heard from Laura what she had already learned from Jake, and said when Laura’s account was over, ‘The way things turned out, though, Jake was right to be concerned.’

‘That doesn’t mean he had to sit there saying he told me so!’ Laura glanced around at the other patients and the nurses flitting hither and thither, and lowered her voice. ‘I said to Jake that my not conceiving had to be God’s will and I meant it, Marianne.’

Marianne voiced her thoughts in that respect when Jake had repeated it to her.

‘Yes, it does sound more like Grandma Sarah than me,’ Laura responded, ‘but—’

‘But nothing,’ Marianne cut her short. ‘Why would you suddenly come out with something like that?’