After the visit to Anna she’d ventured into the garden, stood at the end with her back to the wall and looked at the house with its blackened bricks and shabby green paint. She picked up the fork, and Uncle Otto nodded.

‘Go on, go on. I’m watching. You’re safe.’

The grass was wet and left streaks of damp on her shoes. She stuck the fork in the soil and a robin sat on the handle. Dora laughed. Laughed. She’d heard herself laughing. She looked up at Uncle Otto and waved. No, she’d ignore those after events. Let them run amok behind her back. The bird knows no stress. Has no memories, no anxieties. Lucky him. She was laughing out loud, not inside.

She’d dug the vegetable patch and in the spring planted potatoes and radishes, beans and lettuces. She’d walked over to Maresfield Gardens with the surplus and left them at Anna’s door. Uncle Otto told her that Anna was Sigmund Freud’s daughter. Of course she hadn’t invited them for tea. Uncle Otto had engineered it, tricked Dora, to get her to leave the flat. Doctor to doctor. She knew that now.

Dora brushed the soil from her hands, kicked off her wellington boots and padded through the flat in stockinged feet. The second post had come and she picked the letters off the mat. Gas Board, Electricity Board. She stuck the bills on the mantelpiece. She’d deal with them on Saturday morning, sitting at her desk with her paperknife to one hand, her chequebook in the other. The house gave her an income, tenants in the basement, tenants on the top floor. Supplemented her modest pension. Even so, she had to watch her pennies, dreaded the bills. The house was a constant drain, ‘a bottomless pit’, Uncle Otto used to say, with the damp and the roof, the decorating and modernising. Tenants demanding central heating and the like, were careless with her carpets and the paintwork. Sometimes Dora thought it would be easier to sell up and go and live in a bungalow. But she’d be alone then.

She flicked through the other letters. There was a postcard from a neighbour in Rome, and another letter with a Crawley postmark. Dora recognised the writing. She went to tear it up, thought better, and ripped open the envelope.

Dear Miss or Mrs Simon,

Dora wished she’d get it right. There was much to be said for the new ‘Ms’. It might grate on the ear, but at least it was neutral.

I was very pleased to receive your letter which caught me just before I left London today (I am posting this at Gatwick airport). I will be away for a week or so but would like to make contact with you again on my return.