They got through the first course tolerably well, but during the second matters became even worse, for Mrs. Sondersheim refused anything but the smallest portion of broccoli, rejecting both chicken and potatoes with unnatural emphasis. Is she, perhaps, a vegetarian? Evelyn wondered, but did not like to ask, fearing the answer would be negative. The Swede, affected by his wife’s behaviour, fell silent and began to mope. Even Hugo felt slightly overcome. Disaster, in the form of silence, threatened. And it was at this point that Kate rose, as it were, from the crumbs and did her stuff. Picking up one of Ted’s remarks on the economic and social price of containing epidemics, she launched into one of her set pieces, an aria on her father’s passion for public health, the embarrassment this had caused her as a girl, her partial conversion due to a scenic trip down the sewers of London, her interest in the difference between the highly skilled, specialised, expensive end of medical care, which affected so few (and most of them already dying), and the crude but effective measures of environmental health care, which affected so many and which received so little applause. This was well before Illyich’s attacks on doctors, well before the general public began to ask questions about the real reasons for the decline of certain diseases; she had learned it at her father’s knee. Ted was entranced, for this was stuff after his own heart, engaged though he himself was with the rare, the expensive, and the exotic. He responded with like spirit, recommending that Kate should read his book on plagues in history, offering a resume of his own arguments. The conversation, so nearly dead, fluttered, staggered, took off. Evelyn heaved a sigh of relief and started to worry about the pudding. Ted fierce and expository, Kate pink and excited, the Swede occasionally offering corrections, Hugo contributing a description of cholera in the Congo (which both Ted and the Swede disputed, though they hadn’t been there and Hugo had), they continued cheerfully until the cheese. And then Mrs. Sondersheim spoke.

“This winter,” she said, and they all fell silent, respectfully. “This winter, Jan and I were in Sierra Leone. On holiday. We were on the beach.” She paused. Her husband became very still, made a move as if to intervene, then relapsed, staring down at his plate, as though wishing to dissociate himself. She began again, speaking very slowly, as though trying to explain something very complicated, though what she had to say was simple enough. “Jan had been working for eight months in Senegal. It was decided he should have a holiday. They spend money on their employees, these international oganisations.” She smiled dishearteningly. “So we went to this hotel, in Sierra Leone. A modern hotel, for package tours. Winter breaks. Second holidays.” She paused again, while each listener conjured up an image of the ugly modern hotel, dumped by the shore as confidently and casually as previous generations had set up their trading stations: was she, Evelyn wondered, a woman tormented by guilt, by the rift between the rich and the poor? And if so, why the dress and the diamond brooch?