‘What was it you wanted to tell me?’ She laid the tray across Emily’s lap.

Emily pursed her mouth. Nicholas paced the room. Laura sat on the bed at Emily’s feet. ‘You look better,’ she said, ‘both of you. You have recovered from your flu.’ It was less easy to like them when they were well. ‘You look positively spry,’ she said. ‘What’s the secret? What have you to tell me?’ She watched Nicholas. ‘Nicholas—’ she began.

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’ What would be the use of asking him if he remembered the incident of all those years ago? If he did and he habitually trolled beds, I would feel no different, no sadder than I do. I did not, thank God, get pregnant.

Nicholas was speaking. ‘What did you say? Sorry, I missed—’

‘You never listen,’ Emily shouted in sudden exasperation.

‘Hush, Em,’ said Nicholas. ‘I was saying, Laura darling, that we have decided to have a living-in couple to look after us—’

‘What a good idea,’ said Laura. ‘Where will you put them?’ (Is there such a thing as circular incest? She considered her own question in all its permutations.)

‘Well, darling, since you are never there, we thought the flat at the back. We will knock down your joke wall, of course.’

‘Of course,’ said Laura. ‘Is that what you wanted to tell me?’ She suppressed a shiver.

‘I don’t like your tone of voice,’ said Emily.

‘It won’t be worrying you for long, Mother.’

‘But you will come and stay with us,’ said Nicholas.

‘There will be no reason to.’ Laura kept her voice level.

‘But you are Emily’s child, she’s your mother.’

‘And what are you, Nicholas?’ Laura asked. ‘What are you to me?’

Nicholas did not reply.

‘Your coffee is getting cold,’ said Laura. ‘Drink it up.’

‘It would choke me.’ Nicholas put the cup aside.

‘Tell me this, Nicholas. When I was collecting those empty bottles just now did you, too, remember a party years ago?’

Nicholas stared at Laura.

If I were writing a book, thought Laura, I would write that his mouth is working but it isn’t and I don’t feel anything, no extra pain, nothing. ‘I think I have stunned myself with housework,’ she said. ‘Of course I will get out of my bit of the house. You have no need of me, I have no need of you. It’s a pity, but there, never mind.’

‘We thought,’ said Emily, ‘that with your business in London, your flat wherever it is, and the men you live with whoever they are, that it is a terrible bore for you just to come down from a sense of duty.’

It is, thought Laura, but this time Nicholas begged me to come, said you were dying. ‘Wolf, cry wolf,’ she said. (Surely it is better to be facetious than to accuse?) ‘Nicholas,’ she said cruelly, ‘what’s the matter, you are looking funny?’