When Thursday came and they had gone I found myself alone with Robert. I thought neither of us was thrilled, and Robert looked at his watch. Mrs Raffald looked at both of us, for she wanted to tidy the drawing-room and suspected that when all the coffee was drunk we would go in there. It was strange how difficult it was to be alone, especially as no one was anxious to be with me.

‘All right?’ said Robert from the door. ‘I’ll be back soon.’

‘All right,’ I said. Then I heard the door open again, and turned, thinking Mrs Raffald would be there with her things for tidying up, but it was Robert.

He said, ‘Are you sure you don’t want to come with me?’

I said blankly, ‘No—I mean, yes—I mean, no thank you.’

‘Sure?’ he said.

‘I’ve got a lot to do,’ I said. ‘I’ll be all right.’

He looked worried—or perhaps he looked thwarted. It did occur to me that since everyone seemed to be playing a game with rules unknown to me, Robert might not be concerned only that I would be bored by myself, but he might want me to go with him for reasons of his own. He was the same age as Syl, after all, and Syl wanted me to go with him for reasons of his own. There was a madness about and I couldn’t tell whether it was within or without me, or either or neither. All the boundaries were blurred.

‘What have you been doing?’ asked my mother. She looked cheerful.

I had been to church, but I didn’t tell her. I could imagine her discomfiture as a natural approval of this evidence of my religious feeling vied with her conviction that normal people did not go to church unless compelled by the Sabbath. I told her what she expected to hear—that I had not done anything much.

‘Don’t you want to know about the children’s clothes?’ she asked, adding that they had looked rather sweet.

‘Except for the Peter Pan collars,’ amended Lili. ‘She’d put Peter Pan collars on them, so I took them off again, and fortunately there was enough stuff left to finish the neck lines.’

‘If she’d stuck to the patterns,’ said my mother, ‘there’d have been no need, but Cynthia had to fiddle with them.’ She still looked cheerful. ‘Pork pies,’ she said.

I could think of no response to this remark, so she went on to explain. ‘Cynthia gave us pork pies and pickled cabbage.’

‘How nasty,’ I said tactfully. I loathed my father’s new house, which seemed always to smell of damp washing, but her visit had clearly enlivened my mother. She would, I knew, have liked to categorize the shortcomings of her supplanter’s domestic arrangements but was aware that it would seem too much like jealous triumph.