“It’s not bloody funny! It’s buggered everything! We can’t have any more line-ups, with his face plastered all over the papers. Not to mention the boys; I’m going to have to pull them off him now their cover’s blown!”

She stormed out to the telephone, leaving Pam and Peter staring at each other. Pam whispered, “I think I’d better go.”

George Marlow walked quickly up the steps of a large, detached house in Brighton and through the open front doors. A pair of glass swing doors admitted him to the hallway.

Following the directions of the receptionist, Marlow entered a high-ceilinged, airy room with windows overlooking the sea. Several elderly people were quietly playing draughts or chess, while one or two just sat silently in armchairs, their eyes focused on a future that no one else could see.

He knew where he would find her; alone in her wheelchair by the window, gazing out towards France. He walked silently towards her, stopped two or three feet away.

In a low voice that could not be heard by the other residents, he began to sing, “When you walk through a storm, hold your head up high . . .”

His mother turned in her chair, her face lit with joy. As her son kissed her gently on both cheeks, she picked up the refrain.

“ . . . And don’t be afraid of the dark; at the end of the storm there’s a golden sky, and the sweet, silver song of a lark . . .”

Mrs. Marlow, or Doris Kelly as she used to be known, had spent the entire morning getting ready for his visit. Her make-up was perfect, her lipstick and eye shadow perhaps a trifle overdone, but she was still a beauty, retaining a youthfulness in her face that was, sadly, not mirrored in her once-perfect body. She had grown heavy, and the scarves and beads, chosen carefully to disguise the fact, didn’t help. Her tiny hands, perfectly manicured with shell-pink varnish, glittered with fake diamonds.

“Hallo, my darling!”

When he kissed the powdery cheek, he could feel the spikes of her mascaraed eyelashes. She smelt of sweet flowers. The big china-blue eyes roamed the room as if acknowledging the other residents’ prying eyes.

“Take me somewhere special for lunch, George, I’m ravenous, simply ravenous. How about the Grand Hotel? Or we can have morning coffee, I’d like that. They’re so kind at the Grand.”

He gathered her things into a carrier bag and hung it on the back of her chair, then wheeled his mother out, pausing beside gray-haired docile old women for Doris to smile and wave gaily, and elderly gentlemen who begged her to sing their favorite songs that evening.

“Oh, we’ll have to see, Mr. Donald . . . Goodbye, William, see you later, Frank . . .”