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thinks they’re ill. I don’t know how many times I’ve been into that house.’
    â€˜And now they are.’
    Jean frowned. ‘The boys are on the road to recovery. The eldest two will be back to school in a day or two.’
    â€˜She wants you to do some of your magic, my dear,’ Jim said.
    â€˜Don’t tease me. I’m too tired. She doesn’t want magic from me.’
    â€˜So what does she want?’
    She shrugged and got to her feet. ‘I don’t know, but it’s not a cure for her daughter’s measles.’
    With Mrs Sandringham living in, the big house felt quite different. There were lights on when Jean came home, and curtains drawn. She opened the front door to different sounds and smells. The wireless on and Mrs Sandringham humming at the stove, a pot of stew bubbling. The smell of her powder. Sometimes the pungent odour of young man, and there would be Mrs Sandringham laughing and chiding in the kitchen with one of her boys.
    â€˜Look at you,’ Mrs Sandringham would exclaim when Jean pushed open the kitchen door. ‘Well, look at you.’ And she’d cluck around Jean, her nylon housecoat bristling, chivvying a son, pulling out a chair for her, lighting the gas under the kettle for tea, slicing and buttering a chunk from the loaf, and all the while chatting of something and nothing. Jean would sit, bone-weary, and be glad of the diversion.
    â€˜You can buy it sliced now,’ Mrs Sandringham would say. ‘It’s off the ration. But I don’t know what people see in it.’
    Then she’d take the honey from the larder and dip a teaspoon with great ceremony.
    â€˜Not too thick, Mrs S,’ Jean would say, and Mrs Sandringham would tut, but scrape the honey back.
    â€˜You’ll fade away, you’re not careful,’ Mrs Sandringham said that Sunday evening, the second Sunday of her moving in. ‘You were a man, you’d have a wife doing things properly for you, not this halfway house.’ She leaned back against the counter, arms folded, and watched Jean, who was finishing an early supper at the kitchen table. ‘It’s theday of rest. Your eyes are on stalks and you can’t stop yawning.’
    â€˜I’m fine,’ Jean said, filling her bowl full of Mrs Sandringham’s sponge pudding with a show of enthusiasm. ‘Hale and hearty, with the best housekeeper in the world. The measles won’t go on for ever. Another month, I’d give it.’
    Mrs Sandringham pulled a chair out from the table.
    â€˜If you don’t mind?’ she said, and Jean nodded, smiling slightly at the unusual formality.
    Mrs Sandringham shook her head.
    â€˜It’s too much for a woman, all this. It was different, with Dr Browning. He had a wife as well as me. Mark you, he had his run-ins with illnesses too. But it’s not the same.’
    â€˜I’m doing the same job a man would do, and I’m not doing it badly.’
    Mrs Sandringham sat up straight in her chair. She checked her hair, re-pinning it with expert fingers, then put her hands on her lap.
    â€˜Can I speak plainly to you, Dr Markham? As one to another?’
    â€˜Of course,’ Jean said.
    â€˜Well, then, it’s not the point, is it? That you can do the job the same? In a war and that, then women are needed in men’s place. They do the job as well. We all of us know that, specially the women. But the war’s well over, the men are back, and there’s no need for you to be working your fingers to the bone, out all hours, and home to a house big enough for a great pile of a family, and it’s got nothing but you and your cat. It’s a shame, you being as you are.’
    Jean looked across the table. Mrs Sandringham’s hands had come untethered from her lap and she was rubbing at a mark on the table, the stone in her ring catching the wooden surface with a faint
cratch
sound. As Jean watched, she lifted her head