Her mother appeared on the landing, fluttering a blue air-mailed letter over the banisters. “There’s a letter from Dorrie,” she said. “Do you want to read it?”

“Maybe later,” said Jean, who was still taking off her headscarf and divesting herself of her various packages.

Her younger sister, Dorrie, was married to a coffee farmer and lived in Kenya, which might as well have been Venus as far as Jean was concerned, so remote and unimaginable was her new life. She had a houseboy and a cook and a gardener, and a nightwatchman to protect them from intruders, and a gun under the bed to protect them from the nightwatchman. The sisters had been close as children and Jean had missed her terribly at first, but after so many years she had grown accustomed to not seeing her or her children in a way that their mother never would.

“Is there something nice for supper?” Having noticed the paper bag containing her mended shoes, her mother began a slow and wincing descent of the stairs.

“Liver,” said Jean.

“Oh good. I’m ravenous. I haven’t eaten anything all day.”

“Well whyever not? There’s plenty of food in the larder.”

Sensing resistance, Jean’s mother backtracked a little. “I slept rather late. So I had my oatmeal instead of lunch.”

“So you have eaten something, then?”

“Oh, I don’t call that eating.”

Jean didn’t reply to this but took her purchases into the kitchen and deposited them on the table. The room faced west and was warm and bright in the early evening sun. A fly fizzed and bumped against the windowpane until Jean let it out, noticing as she did so the specks and smears on the glass. Another job for the weekend. They had a woman who came in to clean on a Thursday morning, but she seemed to Jean to achieve very little in her allotted hour, apart from gossiping to her mother. But this was a chore of sorts, Jean supposed, and she didn’t begrudge her the five shillings. Not really.

While her mother tried on the newly mended shoes, Jean took off her skirt and stood at the sink in her blouse and slip, inspecting the spots of dried blood. In the curtained dresser she located a box of rags—the earthly remains of other ruined garments—and, using the severed sleeve of a once-favorite cotton nightgown, began to dab at the stain with cleaning spirit.

“What are you doing?” said her mother, peering over her shoulder.

“I got blood on it,” said Jean, frowning as the rust-colored patch began to dissolve and spread. “Not mine. The liver, I mean.”

“You messy girl,” said her mother, extending a twiggy ankle to admire her shoe, a beige kidskin pump with a Cuban heel. “I don’t suppose I’ll ever wear these again,” she sighed. “But still.”

The mark was slightly fainter now, but larger, and still quite visible against the gray fabric.

“What a pity,” said Jean. “It was such a good skirt for cycling.”