As she arranged furniture and books, chose curtains, planned the garden, discovered her new village, made cautious friends with neighbours, her spirits rose. She felt an almost unholy glee at having distanced herself from Claud, and with Claud his father, whose memory lurked in the old house riddling her with guilt.

In this new ambience there was little to remind her of Claud or his father. In the old house she had been constantly reminded of scenes she would rather forget.

Open the kitchen cupboard and the door would stick where her husband had torn it off its hinge; in the bathroom was a crack in the mirror where he had hurled a toothglass. Every time she went into the garage she remembered the blow which had blacked her eye. In the bedroom she had too often lain wakeful, wondering what mood to expect when he returned, if he returned, for frequently he did not (I was held up). Long after their separation and his death she had remained uneasy. It was unfair to Claud to associate him with the fears, resentments and pains of her marriage, but she had done so. Now, splendidly free of inhibiting memories, she was free to love Claud without guilt, and remember his father with tenderness for the times of happiness and laughter—for they had shared happiness and enjoyed much laughter before she had developed an exaggerated fear of what she secretly thought of as ‘the return from the pub’. By moving house she had cured the phobia.

As she arranged her kitchen cupboards Margaret dwelt on the good times, recovered her balance. She wished she had moved sooner.

Soon she would be ready to ask Claud to a meal, treat with him on her own terms minus the ghost of his father and the tiresomeness of his childhood, during which she suspected she had been too passive. Doormats make poor mothers, she told herself.

From the safe distance of thirty miles, she thought, without fussing, about Claud’s chances of succeeding as a writer, wondered whether he had talent. She was glad that he had the market stall and inclined to put her money on that rather than what seemed to her an ephemeral novel. His writing craze might not last. She was grudgingly grateful to Laura for suggesting the stall; neither Claud nor herself would have had such a simple and original idea.

Before going to sleep—sleep was no problem in the new house—Margaret wondered what it might be like for Laura to have such a young lover and was surprised to find herself envying Laura’s enterprise. She knew her husband would have enjoyed a Laura/Claud combination and this increased her fondness for his memory, eased the nagging sense of responsibility for his fatal coronary.