‘I looked after you. I was here twice a day. That’s going to have to be good enough again.’

Her mother scrapes her knife along her plate. ‘Who’s going to wash all the floors? She gets them so clean!’

‘What happened to feeling like you were in prison?’

‘Oh Claire, where do you get these things? Patience, don’t listen. I never said that.’

‘You did,’ Patience says. ‘I heard it.’

‘Bollocks,’ Jacqueline replies.

‘Patience, can you give us a minute?’

Patience goes into the kitchen, where she starts clattering the dishes around. Is she always this noisy? Or is she clattering for effect, pretending to be hurt? Who told her she could do that?

‘Mum, surely you can see there’s no need for us to keep her on now I’m home? Surely you don’t want me wasting money?’

‘She’s been a great comfort to me, you know. She’s been an angel.’

‘But none of it’s real. She’s not real.’

‘Oh, I see. When you’re off on your holidays, she’s fine, she’s marvellous, but now you’re back she isn’t good enough? She’s more use than you, I can tell you that.’

Claire doesn’t answer, and Jacqueline adds, ‘Patience thinks you’ll go mad if you’re not in charge of me any more.’

‘Patience tells you what you want to hear.’

‘She says you’ll turn to the drink. You’ll become an alcoholic.’

Whatever the language of rebuttal would be, Claire cannot find it. Her head is flooded with a roaring white noise. Her face feels numb.

‘Don’t stare. You look moronic. Your father was a drinker, did you know that? He beat your brother once, black and blue. I’ve never understood how he forgave him for it.’

‘Yes,’ Claire says, ‘it’s amazing, since he never forgave you.’

She thinks it’s a stinging blow, but her mother smiles. She settles back down like a cat that’s finished licking its paws.

‘I’m calling them,’ Claire says. ‘I’m ending the contract.’

‘Fine,’ says Jacqueline. ‘I’ll just pay for her myself. What else am I doing with my estate?’

‘Your estate? This house and two ratty fur coats nobody wants, that’s your estate.’

‘Listen to her! Did you leave your manners in France? You don’t know everything about me, Claire Marie. Maybe I won the lottery. How would you know? Maybe Grandad squirrelled something away before the crooks got it all. Maybe I took more than you realise off your father in the divorce.’

‘Mum,’ Claire says, with sudden misgiving, ‘you can’t remortgage the house.’

‘I’d never do that.’

Wouldn’t she? Claire has no idea. It’s only the lack of anger, the lack of shiftiness, in Jacqueline’s expression that finally gives her a curious, settling sensation of belief. She believes what her mother is saying. The conjunctivitis, she notices, has gone.