“I wonder if she would like a visit?”

“Yes, she would.” Jean had to stop a note of desperation from creeping into her tone. “I think she gets a little lonely with just me for company.”

“Perhaps I could pop in at the weekend?”

It had taken very little maneuvering to get Mrs. Melsom to settle on Sunday afternoon as the ideal time. It only remained for Jean to promote the idea to her mother, who might resent the suggestion that she was being babysat. She decided not to mention her own plans until the Melsom visit had been accepted as fact.

Thursday, hair-wash night, was the most auspicious time for such a conversation. Jean’s mother was at her most compliant and grateful while having her hair set. She leaned over the sink while Jean rubbed in Sunsilk shampoo and rinsed off the lather with a jug of water, and then sat at the kitchen table with a towel round her shoulders and a bag of curlers in her lap. She looked ancient and vulnerable with wet hair, and barely recognizable as female at all. Jean felt her eyes brimming with tenderness as she ran a comb over her mother’s nearly naked scalp and resolved to be kinder.

“I met Mrs. Melsom the other day,” she said, drawing up a section of hair and teasing it around a pink nylon curler. “Pin.”

Her mother passed up a hairpin, wincing slightly as Jean overtightened it.

“She said she’s going to call in and see you on Sunday.”

“Did she? I wonder what she wants.”

“She doesn’t want anything. Curler. She’s just coming to see how you are.”

“Well, you’ll have to do the talking. I’ve got nothing to say.”

This wasn’t going as Jean had hoped.

“You’ve got plenty to say. Pin. It isn’t me she’s coming to see.”

“Well, I don’t know why. I haven’t seen her for years. Ouch.”

“Sorry. I’ll have a yellow one now.”

Jean’s mother rooted in the bag and passed up a yellow curler. These were fatter with longer bristles and gripped like a dream.

“We used to be quite friendly.”

“Exactly. It will do you good to have some company. Pin.”

“I don’t suppose she’ll come.”

“Of course she will. It’s all arranged. I’ll make you a nice sponge.” She winced. The pronoun was a giveaway and Jean’s mother pounced.

“Where will you be, then?”

“I’m . . . having tea with the Tilburys. Yellow, please.”

“Never heard of them.”

“I told you. The Swiss woman. I’m doing a story about her.”

“On a Sunday? They’re never making you work weekends?”

“No. It’s a social visit.”

“Oh. Well, I suppose I’ll have to entertain Mrs. Melsom by myself, then.”

They lapsed into silence, Jean privately jubilant that she had prevailed, her mother suspicious that she had been outmaneuvered. She cheered up later when her hair was dry and brushed into a neat white cloud and her looks were restored.

“Very nice, thank you,” she said, turning her head one way and then the other to check her appearance in the two hand mirrors that Jean held up fore and aft for her appraisal.