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having time and space for that’.
    ‘What?’
    ‘You heard me’.
    ‘But,’ Rosa said, gesturing wildly, ‘I’m not going to stop you! I’m not going to get in the way of your – rediscovering each other, if that’s what you want—’
    Russell said carefully, ‘You may not
mean
to’.
    There was a pause.
    Then Rosa said, in a quite different voice, ‘I see’.
    ‘Good’.
    ‘I see that you don’t want Mum’s attention diverted from you for one little single, baby
instant’.
    ‘No—’
    Rosa stood up clumsily, shaking the table. ‘Fool yourself if you like, Dad,’ she said, ‘but don’t try fooling
me’.
    ‘Rosa. Rosa, I really would like to help you, I really want—’
    ‘Don’t bother,’ Rosa said. She gathered up her bag and scarf and telephone. ‘Just forget I said anything. Just forget I even
asked’.
She twitched her bag on to her shoulder and glared at him again. ‘Luckily for me, I have
friends
who care’.

Chapter Three
    Edie watched the cat make a nest for himself in a basket of clean laundry. It wasn’t ironed – Edie had never been able to see ironing as other than faintly neurotic -but it was clean, or had been. The cat had dug about in the basket, tossing small items contemptuously aside, and rearranged pillowcases and shirts until there was a deep well in the centre, with comfortable, cushioned edges to rest his chin upon. Then he sank down fluidly into it and closed his eyes.
    ‘Arsie’s missing you,’ Edie said to Ben on the telephone.
    Yeah,’ he said, ‘poor old Arse. But I can’t have him here’.
    ‘No, I wasn’t suggesting that’.
    ‘Naomi’s mum has allergies’.
    ‘Does she?’
    ‘And our room is only about big enough for the bed’. ‘It doesn’t,’ Edie said lightly, ‘sound very comfortable—’ ‘It’s ace,’ Ben said. ‘It’s fine. Brilliant. Look, I’ve got to go’.
    ‘Why don’t you come to supper one night?’
    ‘Well—’
    ‘Bring Naomi, of course. And her mother, if you’d like to—’
    ‘Mum,’ Ben said, ‘I’m late’. ‘Just supper’.
    ‘Going!’ Ben called. He’d taken the phone from his ear. ‘Going. Take care, Mum. Gone!’
    Edie stepped over the washing basket and began to sift restlessly through papers on the kitchen table. Russell had produced catalogues in an uncharacteristic manner, catalogues about garden furniture and modern lighting and city-weekend breaks in Europe. He’d also brought flowers, a bunch of anemones that drank a jug of water a day, and a novel that had won a literary prize, and a bottle of oil to put in her bath scented with something she’d never heard of called neroli. It was touching, all this, Edie thought, shuffling items about, but it was also mildly irritating. As conduct, it reminded her of a dog her sister, Vivien, had once had, a small spaniel-ish dog, which always wanted to sit on your knee and gaze into your face with an intensity that required you to give something in return. Not only did Edie not want, particularly, to be given flowers and bath oil and weekends in Ghent, but she also, most particularly, did not want the accompanying obligation.
    ‘It isn’t very grateful of you,’ Vivi said, on the telephone.
    ‘I’d be able to be grateful,’ Edie said, ‘if there weren’t strings attached. But I can’t go from longing for Ben to be back to playing being just married all over again in a single seamless movement’.
    ‘Poor Russell—’
‘Poor?’
    ‘Perhaps he’s been waiting, all these years, to be other than on the edge of your peripheral vision’.
    ‘He liked family life, you know. He liked the children. He adores Rosa’.
    ‘Men love women,’ Vivi said. ‘Women love children. Children love hamsters’.
    ‘Oh, I know. I
know’.
    ‘You just don’t know how lucky you are’. ‘Don’t start—’
    ‘I have to remind you sometimes’. Edie leaned against the wall. ‘Rosa’s lost her job’. ‘No! Poor girl—’
    ‘She sounded completely matter