Mum carried on as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘It’s like I’ve forgotten how to speak to people. You’re gone before I wake up, Cathy’s at school and then you come in late. I know it’s not your fault, with your work and all that, but you have supper and go to bed straight afterwards. I’m alone here all day. . .’

Some nights when I got up to use the toilet, I would see my mother in the living room, writing letters to her friends and family in England by the light of the wheezing lamp, re-reading old letters, thinking her thoughts.

There was a pause so long, I wondered if they had fallen asleep. ‘You don’t realise,’ she said at last, futilely, knowing perfectly well there was nothing he could do about it. ‘It’s no life for me, this.’

Everyone expected the Courtaulds to change their views on the equality of the natives ‘when they had been in the country long enough’. But the Courtaulds did not change their views. Jill came to visit my mother one afternoon, very upset because she had learned of the way the Courtauld servants were indulged.

‘That woman gives them a pound of meat twice a week. And vegetables,’ she said, looking incredulous. ‘She told me that she worries about their diet and makes sure they eat their vegetables.’ They shook their heads over Ginie’s folly.

‘What did you say to her?’ asked my mother, pouring tea for Jill.

Jill reached for the sugar, spooned two lumps into her mug and stirred. There were dark patches of sweat under her arms and the escaped wisps of hair on the back of her neck were damp.

‘Well,’ she began, ‘I tried to make her see sense. I explained that a European diet doesn’t agree with them, that green vegetables only upset their digestion.’

‘What did she say?’

Jill’s cheeks flushed dark red. ‘She laughed at me.’

My mother clicked her tongue. They drank their tea and we listened to the hum of the generator outside and the brass clock ticking away the seconds on the mantelpiece.

‘I hear their servants have houses with bathrooms and flushing toilets,’ Jill said eventually, ‘but that’s not even the worst of it.’ She took a handkerchief out of her pocket and wiped her forehead. When she started speaking again, she enunciated very slowly and clearly, as though biting down on each syllable: ‘The worst thing is that they pay their servants five shillings a week more than anyone else.’

Mum drew in her breath sharply.

‘Joshua came to me, asking for a pay rise,’ Jill continued. ‘He said the Courtaulds’ boys earn twenty-five shillings a week, so why shouldn’t he?’

Mum shook her head. ‘Oh, for shame.’