‘Come to the Grafton Gallery,’ Mattie had suggested. ‘I’ve had a sudden urge to look at the Monet Haystacks, first with lenses and then without, and we could take tea at Brown’s afterwards.’ But The Flea had wanted an afternoon to herself, a chance both to restore order after the seasonal anarchy of the past few days, and also to conduct a rather difficult interview with the daily; in any case, she always preferred the Tate, where every painting seemed to tell a satisfying story and a chair looked like a chair and not a collapsible music stand. In particular, she enjoyed the John Martins – vast, apocalyptic canvases showing the wicked sliding into the filthy abyss while the good sat placidly in spotless linen on the sunlit plains of heaven. Sunlight was, of course, not only the best bleaching agent but also the best disinfectant and, moreover, absolutely free! It was something that she always told her mothers.

To my dear Mattie and Florrie,

Wishing you a splendid Yule-Tide and a peaceful New Year and also a splendid Yule-Tide.

With kind regards from Aileen

The handwriting on the card careered downhill amidst a shower of blots; poor Aileen, clearly back on the bottle. Last time they’d seen her she’d been bright-eyed and wearing a correctly buttoned coat – her people, she’d said, had paid for a spell in a strictly run convalescent home, ‘very like Holloway, only with smaller rooms’, and she’d emerged not only dry but full of plans: she was, she’d told them, going to write and illustrate a novel. She’d apparently forgotten that during her last spell of abstinence she’d claimed to be ‘going in for’ photography and in the one previous to that she’d been very close to opening a tea-room on the South Downs with accommodation for lady walkers.

The front of the card showed a view of the harbour at Polperro, with snow on the quayside and a sticky brownish stain obscuring most of the fishing fleet. Poor Aileen, unmoored and drifting.

Christmas greetings to dearest Mattie and Florrie

Writing this from Northumberland, where I have been attending my daughter Kate during her confinement. I am delighted to say that I am now grandmamma to a bonny boy who looks the spitting image of his grandfather. Are you coming to my ‘Forward Thinking’ lecture in January? (The 14th, at Conway Hall.) I have chosen ‘Wages for Mothers’ as my theme.

Your loving comrade

Dorothy

The picture on the front of Dorothy’s card was of a serenely smiling Virgin and child, but Dorothy had drawn a speech balloon from the Virgin’s mouth, so that she appeared to be saying ‘I should be receiving an allowance for this!’ Mattie had laughed out loud at the picture but the graffitoed image had made The Flea uncomfortable. She’d seen enough dismal rooms where a cheap illustration of the Holy Family was the sole non-utilitarian possession – the one pleasant view on which a weary woman could rest her gaze. ‘Not everything should be shaped into a joke,’ she’d said, a little sharply; she herself had grown up in a household where unchecked laughter had been seen as a bodily failing, rather like breaking wind.