‘You needn’t go,’ she said. ‘The wedding’s off.’

I sat on my bed feeling deader than dog, even experiencing the peace of the dead.

‘You can take your hat off now,’ Mrs Raffald said.

‘Have I got it on?’ I asked. I raised my hand to my head to make sure, and there it was: the hat I had always worn to weddings. How significant, I thought, that I hadn’t bothered to buy a new hat for my son’s wedding. It hadn’t occurred to me before.

‘What happened?’ I asked, not caring. ‘Where’s Syl?’

I realized that I had no idea whether he’d come back from interring dog to get into his wedding clothes. I said, ‘I think I’m losing my grip.’ I thought, I know now what that means: it means we’re all at sea in a storm, clinging to the mizzen mast or the lifeboat’s rim or the captain’s sleeve, and one by one we tire and we loosen our grip and away we go, down to the depths.

‘He went down the pub,’ said Mrs Raffald.

That sounded reassuring. People didn’t go down the pub to shoot themselves.

This reflection brought me back to life. The cancellation of a wedding at the last, the very last minute, was, if I remembered correctly, not a thing to be taken lightly. I struggled to accommodate myself to this idea, but I didn’t want to think about it. I started to speak again but my words were slurred. I could hear them—thick, unsteady and wet round the edges. I said, ‘I’m not drunk—I haven’t been drinking anything’, and then I thought that that was an unseemly remark for a lady to make on the day of her son’s wedding.

I began to feel better. Surely all was now well. Few of us had wanted this wedding.

‘On the other hand,’ I said, and now I was speaking more clearly, ‘I could easily be going mad. I feel as though I am.’

‘It’s shock,’ said Mrs Raffald.

I was conscious of myself as though I could see myself in a mirror. I could see an old woman shaking as with the palsy, putting out a tremulous hand for comfort, puzzled and fearful and at a loss.

‘Then in that case,’ I said, my voice still not quite right, ‘we’d better have a drink.’

She went away and came back with the brandy.

I said, ‘I prefer a whisky usually, but I’ll make do with this. Can I have a cigarette?’

She said, ‘That Lili…’

I said, ‘She’s a bad influence isn’t she?’ I was feeling stronger. ‘How do you know Syl went to the pub? Did he tell you?’

‘I told him,’ said Mrs Raffald calmly. She was a calming person. A good influence. ‘I told him to go.’