“Of course I can,” said Mark, smiling affably, amused by her little drama of terror.

“And you’re so big,” said Kate.

“I’m nineteen,” said Mark.

“Well, I think that’s amazing,” said Kate, and sat back, relaxing, a passenger; through all the years she had brought him, and now he was a grown man, able to take charge of her in his turn. She was filled with tenderness, delight, wonder, gratitude. In the back of her mind lay the suspicion that she had been one of those women designed to ruin their sons through excessive devotion, through emotional dependence, and would have done so, had her life turned out a degree less luckily: how fortunate that Mark had been saved from her attentions by her own need to earn her living, by the other two and their needs, by Hugh, by the tatty diversities of tatty distracting modern life. Some power had watched over them all, and let the children free. Or so it seemed, or so it seemed. How could one ever tell? Let the years be kind, let there be no revenge, she prayed, thinking of Beatrice Mourre’s son dead in Beirut, of Jessie Parker’s son dead in Belfast: and pushed these selfish fears away, to relate to Mark the interesting changes in Sebastian, and to ask Mark if he thought it was true that Sebastian was keen on Susanna.

“None of your business,” said Mark, smiling broadly.

“Quite right,” said Kate, “none of my business at all. But you can’t blame me for being curious.”

“You’re too curious by half,” said Mark. “I wonder anyone tells you anything. You’re the worst gossip in London.”

“What rubbish,” said Kate, crossly. “I’m a very discreet person. As silent as the grave.”

“Well, so am I,” said Mark, smiling his enigmatic smile. “I must take after you. Shall I park here?”

“Come in with me and choose some flowers,” said Kate.

“I don’t know one flower from another,” said Mark. “I’ll stay here and read the paper.”

“Do come, darling,” wheedled Kate, wishing to prolong this unexpected intimacy, but Mark shook his head, and said, firmly, smiling implacably, “No, thanks.”

“My goodness me,” said Kate. “You said that just like a man. You sounded just like a man when you said that.”

“I am a man,” said Mark, benevolently, and leaned over to kiss her cheek. But, beyond that, did not move. And there he sat, reading the paper, while Kate tripped off to the shop on her wobbly heels: how could one ever know what he was thinking? Night and day for years she had watched over him, and now he just said, “No.” Or, rather, “No, thanks.” A wonderful accomplishment, an accomplished person. Her heart sang with pride as she entered the shop, a green and leafy bower, dank, expensive, warm, a grotto smelling of peat and freesias and carnations, quaking and shivering with maidenhair ferns, flooded with a pale green sunny light. What should she choose? Something exotic, something expensive, for you don’t have a party every day of the year, thought Kate; why not be extravagant, for a change? Large orange thick-stemmed bold South African daisies, little pink Israeli carnations, carnations from British Columbia, golden enchantment lilies, freesias, anemones, violets? “What a marvellous selection you have, for the time of year,” said Kate, to the woman in her white overall. “I thought it might just be chrysanthemums. What are those little pink things?”