‘I wouldn’t mind that,’ said Lili. ‘It is possible to look very beautiful in a habit.’

‘The habits are blessed when they make their final vows,’ I said. ‘They have a robing ceremony.’

‘I know,’ said Lili.

I knew it was probable that she knew. I just wanted to talk about it. ‘Inside the main door there’s a holy water stoup of blue-and-white porcelain,’ I said. ‘They brought it from France. The walls of the visitors’ parlour are blue, and the rest are white.’

‘And a statue of Our Lady in a blue-and-white dress with a golden crown,’ said Lili.

I realized that I had been talking about the convent without explanation or location. ‘Did you know Mother Joseph?’ I asked, ‘and Sister Bridget?’

‘A long time ago,’ said Lili, ‘when we used to stay with Marie Claire.’

My mother had come in. ‘Wasted lives,’ she said. She was a very English Catholic and opposed to religious excess in all its forms.

I wanted to ask whether she thought her own life unwasted and whether the fact that she had given birth to me was sufficient justification for it.

‘I don’t think so,’ said Lili. ‘I should have liked to be a nun, except they wouldn’t let me smoke and I couldn’t live without cigarettes. I wouldn’t want to.’

‘You?’ said my mother. ‘A fine nun you’d have made.’ She moved to empty the ashtray. I thought, Be still and know that I am God. ‘Some of them are very good and quite useful, but it’s a selfish existence.’

‘I don’t want to appear awkward,’ said Lili that evening, ‘but she looks like something the cat dragged in.’ She was sitting on her heels with a pin in her mouth, eyeing me with pity as I stood yet again in my mother’s wedding dress.

‘That’s why I want to alter it,’ explained my mother wearily, too tired to argue.

‘I’m not certain that it’s salvageable,’ said Lili.

‘That’s rubbish,’ said my other. ‘It’s in perfect condition. All it needs is to be made to fit. It looked lovely on me.’

‘Hmm,’ said Lili abstractedly, leaning forward and tweaking at the hem. The fact that she was doing this and not looking at her old friend made her doubt about this statement less evident, but all the same my mother protested. ‘It did, Lili,’ she said. ‘Everyone said so.’

‘Oh yes, it did,’ said Lili, ‘though, mind you, I think it highly unlikely that anyone would tell you on your wedding day that you looked the most frightful frump—not,’ she added hastily, ‘that you did. All I mean is that brides are always described as beautiful.’

She sat back on her heels again. ‘They so seldom are,’ she reflected. ‘Tulle is terrible, and lace is worse, and white is woeful. Nothing white should ever be taken in at the waist. White should either flow in an unbroken line from the shoulder to the ground or be superbly cut and tailored. Veils don’t help. They make the poor girls look as though they hadn’t been properly unpacked, as though they’d been taken out of the box and someone had left half their wrappings on.’