‘I don’t know why you have to be so contrary,’ snapped my mother. ‘Brides always wear white veils. They always have.’

‘Murder is fairly common too,’ said Lili. ‘It always has been.’

‘Don’t be silly, Lili,’ said my mother. ‘The white is meant to represent purity and innocence’

‘That’s pretty stupid,’ said Lili, ‘considering that marriage means an end to all that. I can see why nuns wear white when they take the veil, but when you think of the way everyone goes on at the prospect of the wedding night innocence is the last thing on anyone’s mind.’ She now had a cigarette between her teeth and squinted against the smoke.

‘Don’t be disgusting,’ said my mother.

‘There you are,’ said Lili. ‘You said disgusting.’

‘Oh, anyway,’ said my mother, ‘I don’t know why we’re talking about it. She’s got to wear that dress come what may.’

‘Why?’ asked Lili.

‘Because I wore it,’ explained my mother. ‘I’ve saved it for years for my daughter to wear.’

I thought she might add, ‘And she’s bloody well going to wear it,’ but my mother had said her piece for the moment. Her insistence seemed absurd in view of her own failed marriage, but I had always been too nervous to point this out, to ask what she made of the break in connection between the symbolism of the dress and the unassailability of the marriage vow.

‘I wore crimson at my wedding,’ said Lili. ‘Heavy wild silk, calf-length.’

‘I know,’ said my mother acidly. ‘I was there.’

‘I looked wonderful,’ remarked Lili dreamily. ‘I should have been marrying a prince.’

My mother said nothing, and Lili stubbed out her cigarette in a pin tray. She said, ‘Well, if there’s nothing else for it,’ and began to fold and manipulate the wedding dress while I stood like a doll, cold and alien and powerless.

That night my mother went to bed early and Robert walked through the wood, past the golf course to the pub. He would pass Syl’s house on the way, since it stood close to ours on the same side of the private road, behind hedges of cypress and box, flanked by lawns garnished with birch and all manner of ornamental trees.

‘Why don’t you pop in and see Syl and say hallo to his mother?’ suggested Lili, malice flickering in her bright face.

‘He’ll be busy,’ said Robert, ‘studying briefs, or whatever it is he does.’

‘Oh, go on,’ said Lili. ‘He’ll be delighted to have a break and go off for a pint. Perhaps he’ll play you a tune on his oboe.’ Syl’s oboe was another of the things about him that I couldn’t bear. He must have been playing the beastly thing for years.

‘I’ll see,’ said Robert—I think in deference to me, for he gave his wife a nasty look as she beamed up at him.