“I’m happy to go swimming,” said Jean.

“Mummy doesn’t like it, so we never go.”

Maybe it was something to do with being Swiss and landlocked, Jean thought. Although there was surely no shortage of lakes.

She offered this theory to Margaret, who considered it judiciously and then said, “No. She just doesn’t like getting her hair wet.”

At first it seemed as though there was no one at home. The side gate—the usual point of entry—was bolted, but when they rang the doorbell and peered through the stained glass, there was Gretchen coming down the stairs towards them with a basket of ironing under one arm.

“You’re all hot,” said Margaret, disengaging herself from her mother’s welcoming hug.

“Sorry,” she replied a little breathlessly, fanning herself with the skirt of her pinafore. “I’ve been busy.”

“Did you make the spitzbuben?”

Gretchen’s face fell. “Oh no. I didn’t. I got caught up with other things.”

Margaret screwed her face into the most furious knot of displeasure.

“I’ll make them this evening, when I’ve done the ironing,” her mother promised.

“But I wanted to give Jean one.”

“Poor Mummy,” said Jean, feeling that Margaret was being rather unreasonable. Spoiled even, though it pained her to think the word. “She’s been slaving away all afternoon while we’ve been out having tea at Simpson’s.”

“Really—Simpson’s? Margaret, you little monkey! You hardly need spitzbuben as well.”

Margaret looked suitably sheepish. She was a good-hearted girl really, thought Jean, and was easily corrected.

“And we called on Daddy at the shop. We helped him to sell a ruby necklace for twenty pounds!”

Gretchen glanced at Jean. “Oh, did you? That’s a nice idea. I bet he was surprised to see you.”

Jean hoped it was apparent that the nice idea had been all Margaret’s, but it would have been making too much of it, she felt, to raise the matter. She couldn’t linger anyway; there was her mother and the postmortem of the strawberry tea to be faced, so she said goodbye to Margaret, who was eager to get outside and commune with Jemimah.

As soon as the two women were alone though, it was Gretchen who brought it up again.

“I’m so glad you went to see Howard,” she said. “He likes you very much, you know, and it’s so good for him to have a woman friend to talk to.”

She was so emphatic in her approval that Jean began to suspect her of meaning quite the reverse. It was funny, too, that Howard had described the benefits of Jean’s influence on Gretchen in much the same terms. She remembered her mother’s jealous remark: “They seem to be making quite a project of you, for some reason.”

17

September 1957

Dear Jean,

I wonder if you would be free to come on a little family outing next Sunday to Howard’s Aunt Edie near Maidstone. We go every year to harvest her apples and cobnuts. She has a wonderful garden for tennis and a picnic and it’s always a lovely day out.