‘Nobody said so,’ squawked my mother. ‘I don’t believe it, but it’s a pretty thought. Isn’t it?’ she added angrily as I still stood gazing at her.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘I’ll go down myself later,’ said my mother, ‘but I’m busy with the stuffing for the duck. Go and get some fresh air.’

The air was more than fresh. It was freezing in the garden. It was nearly as cold in the summerhouse. There was a bud on the cactus but it looked unpromising. There was a small bottled gas-heater in the corner and I wondered if my mother had instructed the jobbing gardener to warm the place up further to encourage the thing to flower. There was a pile of my books where I had left them half-read. And there were some torn scraps of red crêpe paper on the floor. The moorish arches of the summerhouse windows framed a vista of dead grass and deciduous trees beyond the broken hedge of evergreens through which Syl entered my mother’s garden when he came to call. Some black birds flew by with a stunned weariness like the survivors of a disaster. Winter must seem like a disaster to birds, and rain was on its way. I didn’t care. I picked up a bit of red paper and twisted it in my fingers. It was the colour of the doubtless poisonous berries which gleamed here and there in the hedge and it stained my hands. The summerhouse was always untidy because my mother stored things in it besides using it as a haven for her cactus. Garden chairs and umbrellas were stacked in a corner with some flower pots. The cushions along the ledge smelled damp, and when I sat on them they felt chilly even through my tweed skirt. The paraffin heater which was left on constantly may have been sufficient to support life in the cactus, but it wasn’t enough to comfort me. I sat under a travelling rug and looked at my fingernails.

Lili tapped on the window before she came in, wearing a scarlet wool coat with a huge collar. I hadn’t seen it before. The collar stood up round her head and her rusty curls rested on it.

‘You look warm,’ I said from under my rug.

‘I’m not really,’ said Lili. ‘I’m beginning to pine for the banks of the Nile.’

‘Do you think that thing is going to flower?’ I asked.

‘Mmm,’ said Lili.