‘More tea, Marion? I think I can squeeze a cup out.’ She tipped the teapot but there was only a trickle. ‘Robert, go into the kitchen and make a fresh pot?’

Marion started to stand. ‘I can go.’

‘No, no, you stay where you are.’ Her mother stopped her. ‘It’s good to have you home at last and you have had a long journey. Rest while you can. You’ll be leaving us for Glasgow soon enough.’

‘Um, we need to talk about that.’

‘We do,’ her mother agreed. ‘Your father and I will drive you there and get you settled in your rooms. I haven’t been to Glasgow for a long time and I thought I might take a look around the shops.’

‘Here we are. Fresh pot.’ Her dad was back. ‘Just let it mask for a few minutes.’ He sat down. ‘As your mother was saying, we were thinking we would take you to Glasgow and get you settled.’

‘Thank you. That’s very kind of you, but …’

‘We can stop and get some lunch on the way. What time are they expecting you?’

‘I don’t …’

‘You haven’t got hold of them yet?’

‘I have, Mum, but, well …’ Marion took a steadying breath. ‘I have decided not to go, after all. The Duke and Duchess want me to stay and look after the girls until they have finished their education.’

The silence was deafening.

Her stepfather scratched his head and avoided looking at Maggie by picking up a teaspoon and stirring the pot.

Marion waited for her mother’s reaction. It came quietly at first.

‘I hope this is a joke?’

‘No, Mum.’

‘But what about those poor wee children you were going to fight for? Give a future to? You were going to do wonderful things for them, help them escape their dreadful poverty.’

Marion watched as Maggie’s colour rose, first blotchily across her chest, then her throat and now her cheeks.

‘Mum, I understand how you must be fee—’

‘You don’t understand anything about how I am feeling.’ Maggie spoke very slowly, with an anger that was making her tremble. ‘You are damn well going to Glasgow if we have to drag you there. I brought you up as a good Scottish working-class socialist, and what has become of you, eh?’

Robert held a hand up to his wife. ‘Maggie, just listen to the girl. She will have her reasons.’

‘Reasons?’ Maggie was shouting now. ‘Oh aye, there’ll be reasons all right. She’s too good for us now, isn’t she? Her lah-di-dah life in London has gone to her head. We are beneath her now! I am surprised she hasn’t asked us to curtsey before her.’

Marion sighed. This was exactly what she had hoped to avoid. Her mother was highly strung, and she didn’t take change well. It frightened and unsettled her – a symptom of the grief and shock that drowned her when Marion’s father had died. Marion had been only three but she remembered going to live with the grandmother she had been named after. She was told that her mother had ‘gone on holiday for a rest’ but she was away for a very long time.