“No, no, you’re right, I shouldn’t,” said Kate, “and now I won’t have to any more.” She was deeply touched by his solicitude, charmed to think that over the weeks he had noticed her walking barefoot in the kitchen of a morning, and had felt sorry for her cold feet. She had not expected a present, had not thought of such a thing. He was human after all, he had noticed her, had noticed even her feet, had paid attention to her needs, had felt gratitude. How could she ever have found him so irritating? Could you get to like anyone, given the time? Not that she wasn’t glad to get rid of him, enough is enough, but nevertheless, how good that it should end so well, and even as she was thinking this, looking around her family circle, feeling as she sat there a sense of immense calm, strength, centrality, as though she were indeed the centre of a circle, in the most old-fashioned of ways, a moving circle—oh, there is no language left to describe such things, we have called it all so much in question, but imagine a circle even so, a circle and a moving sphere, for this is her house and there she sits, she has everything and nothing, I give her everything and nothing—even as she sat, the phone went, and it was Beatrice Mourre from Paris, wanting to thank Kate, wanting to wish Mark a happy birthday, screeching excitedly, a voice not heard in nineteen years, “Ah, my dear, I remember you as though it were yesterday”—and Kate shouted back, unnecessarily loud across the many miles of land and sea, that it had been her joy, her pleasure, to have been able to look after Mujid and Simone: and as soon as she put the phone down, it went again, this time for Ruth, then again, and the lull was over, and the circle broke up into its various spheres of activity, and Kate, in the end, having broken a jug and run down to the never-closing Pakistani shop on the corner to buy some paper napkins, found herself alone in her room, about to change, sitting on her bed, wondering what to wear.

And let us leave her there, pondering the choice between various garments, each of which seemed to present some minor disadvantage. The long all-faults-concealing pink cheesecloth had a drooping hem and tripped her up. The too revealing dress from Richard Shops always showed bra straps as well as a daring amount of bosom, and the Indian one smelled rather strongly of Ruth, who had borrowed it recently for a school concert, a smell delightful to Kate but not perhaps to others. The old black one was marginally too tight, and even when it had fitted had been a bit on the vulgar side. Perhaps none of them suited her at all, perhaps none of them had ever suited her. Why ever had she in a fit of folly bought that expensive French silk, had she really ever thought she’d have the nerve to wear it?