I said loudly, ‘Margaret is too young for him. She is not at all mature. She isn’t ready to be married.’

‘I know,’ said Lili, ‘but what’s to be done about it?’

‘Speak to Monica,’ I said hopelessly.

‘You can’t speak to Monica,’ said Lili. ‘She doesn’t listen.’

‘Then I don’t know what to do. Perhaps I should speak to Syl.’ I poured coffee and passed the sugar. It didn’t occur to me to speak to Margaret.

‘I don’t think that would help,’ said Lili. She had the air of someone who knew what she was talking about. ‘I’ve skirted round it a few times but he’s stubborn. And he’s bought that picture of Robert’s for a wedding present.’

I said before I could stop myself, ‘I’ll make him keep it whatever happens. He won’t want his money back.’

‘That’s all right,’ said Lili abstractedly. ‘I’m not worrying about that. I was just thinking he does seem to have made his mind up.’

‘He’s made it up before,’ I said, again before I could stop myself and sounding unexpectedly bitter, even to my own ears. I was glad the issue was out in the open. Perhaps relief was making me unguarded.

‘It would be a disaster,’ said Lili. ‘Most marriages are, but this would be an absolute disaster.’

‘Maybe…’ I began.

‘No maybe about it,’ said Lili. ‘It would be dreadful.’

‘I was going to say,’ I said, ‘that maybe we should get the priest to talk to Margaret.’

Lili stirred her coffee. ‘I don’t know why I didn’t tell you before,’ she said. ‘I tell most people most things without a moment’s hesitation but I haven’t told you this.’

‘What?’ I asked.

She placed her spoon carefully in her saucer before she spoke, and I remembered she had been an actress or was it a dancer?

‘Margaret wants to be a nun,’ she said, putting her elbows on the table and lacing her fingers together. ‘I haven’t told anyone this either, but when I went to see Marie Claire just before we came away I went to the convent to see Mother Joseph too—I’ve known her for years—and she said she’d been sorry to see Margaret go, but she’d eat her wimple if she didn’t come back. And she’s no fool.’

‘A nun,’ I said. ‘Yes, I see.’ What I saw was the recollected face of my intended daughter-in-law as she turned from the Blessed Sacrament. ‘Yes, I see,’I said again.

‘There’d been some trouble,’ said Lili. ‘Mother Joseph said she didn’t know what it was all about but, God forgive me, I think she was lying. She knows everything that happens before it happens. Margaret wanted to get away. That silly Marie Claire wouldn’t tell me either—but then she wouldn’t tell me anything. She thinks I don’t know she’d been having an affair with Robert.’

‘Good heavens,’ I said.

‘Silly cow,’ said Lili with some force. She offered me a cigarette and I took it. ‘As if I couldn’t have stopped it if I’d wanted to.’