She would be the last person to react unreasonably. She would get to know Brenda’s stuff. Which was hers now.

‘What has become of Brenda?’ she asked, to begin with.

‘I wouldn’t know,’ he said. ‘Only that she cashes her cheque.’

‘But you must know. Or somebody. Your accountant, or solicitor.’

‘I believe she lives at Denistone,’ he said, wiping some marmalade off the wind-jacket he wore when he didn’t go to business.

Because Hessell Mortlock was semi-retired. That is, he had a manager he didn’t altogether trust, and would go down to the works to try to catch the manager out. Hessell liked best to work amongst his shrubs, and to come in to a light lunch which his wife had prepared. After a certain age, a man can’t be too careful about his heart.

In the beginning, as she looked after what the estate agents would have called this well-appointed residence, Mrs Mortlock remained Anthea Scudamore, opening drawers and peeping inside. Or depositing herself in a chair to receive other people’s secrets. Only in this instance, the secrets were too carefully kept. Or did not exist. And whereas in the past she had brought into other people’s houses a whole secret life, a mystery of girlhood, in this one she failed to conjure, perhaps because she was a married woman, and officially the house had become her own.

At first she longed for the company of her mother, hoping the latter might know how to fill an emptiness. But Mrs Scudamore wrote:

... perhaps when it is spring, Anthea dear, perhaps when you have settled down. I do not feel it is altogether right for a mother to intrude shall we say immediately on a – she had crossed out young and written: married couple. I am sure, dear, on thinking it over, you will agree with me that this is a reasonable attitude – to say nothing of all the little things you will have to do to put your house in order – I must confess I rather itch to have a peep at his first wife’s furniture – perhaps it is frightful! Do you think about your mother, darling? I cannot help feeling you have changed towards me since Hessell Mortlock carried you off. I suppose it is natural for a girl to alter. We are experiencing such a torrential autumn. Oh dear, the gales! The thought of trees falling on those electric wires – and killing people in a blue flash! Your father is well, but has developed the habit of not answering. I am suffering from my neuralgia, and have a cold ...

Mrs Mortlock was not exactly put out by her mother’s scruples. She had begun to feel guiltily irritated at being treated like a child, still she would have enjoyed the luxury of playing at childhood in her mother’s presence. But her mother did not come.

I have my husband, Mrs Mortlock consoled herself.

She made him a sponge cake, and watched him fill his cheeks with it, munching and munching. Some of the crumbs fell down his plaid wind-jacket, and he looked down, to see, without his glasses, brushing the crumbs frowningly off. The wind-jacket, or the woollens he wore under it, made him bulge more than she had noticed.