“Yes, Mama. I’m just going up to change.”

“I have been waiting. Withers has brought the tea up. Come along. You know I hate to drink it when it has become stewed.”

With a sigh I brush down my skirts and attempt a cheerful expression before heading into the drawing room.

As always my mother’s frailty distresses me. She has become so insubstantial, so delicate. She sits by the fire in a winged chair that dwarfs her.

“There you are. Oh, Lilith, darling, you surely haven’t been out of the house looking like that?” Her hand flies to her mouth and her shock is genuine.

“I’ve been helping out at St. Mary’s, Mama. You remember?”

“Of course I do. I have not entirely lost my wits, whatever you may think.”

“I think no such thing.”

“Don’t you? You regard me as if I were an imbecile at times. And yet I am not the one who goes about looking as if I have fallen from a carriage into a puddle.”

“There is no point in dressing up, Mama.”

“I am not suggesting ‘dressing up,’ as you call it. I am merely observing that if anyone appears to have lost their sense of what is reasonable it is not me. Really, Lilith, when everyone else is making such an effort. Look at all those brave young men going off to war. Do you see them looking a fright?”

“No, Mama.”

“No, of course you don’t. They wouldn’t dream of turning out shabbily. It would be letting the side down.”

I have to bite my lip to prevent myself from saying something I know I will later regret.