‘Actually there is.’ Villana had heard the music on her walk, drifting over from the town. She’d remarked on it to Mrs Haverty, who’d said that a couple calling themselves the Zodiacs had arrived in the town that morning, a man who threw knives at his wife. Mrs Haverty had explained that you could hear the music because it was being relayed through a loudspeaker as an advertisement for the entertainment.

‘I wonder it’s allowed,’ Mrs Rolleston said.

‘Well, I’ve told you, Grandmamma,’ Villana concluded. ‘And now I’m going to tell Lionel. If anyone objects to Finny coming here it has only to be said.’ She gathered up her cigarettes and lighter, and her novel from the convent library. ‘Would Miss Laffey make something for me?’ She turned to her grandmother before she left the drawingroom. ‘Nothing frilly, quite without elaboration. Miss Laffey should be up to that. Shall I write a note for Brigid’s child to take?’

‘If that seems appropriate to you.’

‘I shall not have bridesmaids.’

Soon after Villana’s departure from the drawing-room Mrs Rolleston made her way to the kitchen. The letter was in the drawer of her dressing-table, the stamp fitted as snugly as possible into the envelope’s corner, the two ruled lines beneath the careful Private. She carried the image with her to the kitchen, and thankfully lost it when another conversation began.

‘The beef’s poor, ma’am,’ Brigid complained. ‘Broderick’s sending over scandalous stuff these days.’ As she spoke she lifted a web of suet from the offending joint and exposed the meat’s shortcomings to the old woman’s gaze. ‘Neither hung nor lean, ma’am. I’ve put it to Miss Pollexfen.’

Mrs Rolleston nodded. She tried to think about the meat, but found herself dwelling instead on the fact that one of the kitchen windows was slightly open. There’d been a time when these windows were always kept closed because of flies and bluebottles. The men would unharness the carts in the yard and then the horses would be led to the paddock, leaving the flies behind.

‘What’s the matter with Broderick?’ she said, making an effort. ‘Is he drinking?’

She still liked coming down to the kitchen. In a way she liked it better than poking about the conservatory, or being in the drawing-room or dining-room. The kitchen was somehow more a place to linger in, or had become so. The vast oak dresser, standing an inch or so free, of a pink-distempered surface, was reassuring. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, she would wonder if it was still there and then go down to make certain that it was, not later revealing to anyone the doubt she’d been subjected to. Alone in the kitchen’s spaciousness, she would admire the windows and wall-cupboards that so gracefully accommodated the faint concavity of the walls. The range and the long, scrubbed table formed a trinity with the dresser, the range the kitchen’s heart, as the kitchen was the household’s. When she stood there in the night that was how she thought of it.