She adores her husband, she could imagine people saying.

She did adore him, too. They were early-to-bed, of course, and sometimes then, they would hold each other most touchingly. Mrs Mortlock almost cried for the tenderness she could have given to the world. As she held her husband in her opulent arms, she could feel his stomach, stirring, rumbling, against her, but distant. There were times when her arms could not eliminate the distant sadness which possessed her. Lying, for instance, listening to the soft snoring which issued out of his slack mouth. For he would no longer have the protection of his teeth.

Mrs Scudamore wrote:

... I have some news. You remember that young man you met on the Island – that Doctor Flegg? Well, he is married. She is not from here, and I am told, won some kind of competition – of no importance – purely local. I understand she is – or was, that is – Miss Toowoomba. Her name was Cherie Smith. Oh, my darling, I am so relieved to think you are married to such a substantial man...

If her mother had been at hand Mrs Mortlock might have hinted at indelicacy. Certainly she would have protested that the information did not interest her. To discover that her mother was not always right had come as a shock. Like the shock of distance. At first, in the sadness of separation, she had kept her mother’s letters in a bundle, but now she began to tear them up.

She had her husband.

On Sunday he would call out: ‘If you don’t put the finishing touches, we’ll miss the sermon.’

She would go outside to the car, and he would be shouting, laughing. On Sundays he was particularly jolly. In one of his moulded suits. In the shirt she had laundered so beautifully for him. The women you pay to iron, he used to say, don’t take pride in what they are doing. Funnily enough she found she enjoyed ironing. To dress her husband in those slightly starched, made-to-order collars.

She would go out to him and know that he was pleased. She moved well, in that large hat, and of all the things she had brought with her, the grey frock, drawn frothily across her somewhat full bosom, her arms showing in white flashes through the slashes in the long filmy sleeves.

The service would have started by the time they arrived. She enjoyed their progress down the aisle, the warden whose deferential face she was beginning to recognize, the loud accents of those who informed one another: ‘There’s Mortlocks!’ If they were late their clothes showed they could afford to be. She would kneel down, however, so meekly, it was in itself an act of worship. While the old boy would stick his bottom on the edge of the seat, and shade his eyes for a second or two. You couldn’t expect old men to go all the way; they mightn’t get up again.