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properly; she could tell Jeffrey, but he had never quite approved of what he referred to as her “wicked sense of humour,” by which he clearly meant “streak of cruelty”; he hated to hear people made fun of. So if she said to him, “This woman, Frida, divorced food,” he would probably make Ruth explain the whole thing and then say, “Good for her.” He was already inclined to approve of Frida. Ruth had sent him the paperwork, as promised; he also, according to Frida, sent regular e-mails with instructions on how to care for his mother, a field Frida was trained in, thank you very much, but, as you soon learn, the hardest part of this job is usually the families. Oh, the families.
    Frida ate the last of her egg. “You’re naturally thin, aren’t you,” she said, with a trace of pity in her voice.
    “I’ve got a bit of a belly these days,” said Ruth, but Frida wasn’t listening. She tapped the top of her empty egg until it fell inwards.
    “It’s good, though, to be a big girl in this job. That’s what I’ve noticed. I’ve met nurses though, tiny girls, with the strength of ten men. Never underestimate a nurse.”
    “I know something about nurses,” said Ruth, and Frida looked at her in what seemed liked surprise. “My mother was a nurse.”
    “She took you to work with her, did she?” Frida asked, a little prickly, as if she had a tender bundle of children she had been instructed to leave at home.
    Ruth laughed. “She had to, really. My parents were missionaries. She was a nurse, and he was a doctor. They ran a clinic together, attached to a hospital. In Fiji.”
    This was the first time Ruth had mentioned Fiji in the weeks since Frida’s arrival. Frida didn’t respond. She seemed to be engulfed in an obscure displeasure.
    “I saw how hard my mother worked, and how exhausted she always was,” said Ruth, nervous now, in a bright, chatty tone. “And I suppose she was never really what you would call appreciated, though she was very loved. My father’s work was appreciated, and my mother’s sacrifice. That’s how people put it.”
    “What people?” asked Frida, as if she were questioning the existence of any people, ever.
    “Oh, you know,” said Ruth, waving a vague hand. “Church people, hospital people, family. I’ve always thought of nursing as a very undervalued profession.”
    Frida snorted. “I wouldn’t call this nursing,” she said. Then she stood; she seemed to call on the security of her height. She raised her eggcup from the table like a chalice, passed into the kitchen, and pushed open the screen door with one hip, still with the eggcup lifted high.
    “For the snails,” she said, and threw the crushed eggshell into the garden.
    The taxi called for her soon afterwards, and she left the house in an excellent mood.

 
    4
    Ruth often woke with a sense that something important had happened in the night. She might have dreamt a tiger again. She might have dreamt, as she used to, of Richard Porter in her bed—although surely, a dream like that should be of Harry. She did think of Richard more now that Frida was in the house, as if to have daily company reminded her of the existence of other people. Between Richard, and Frida, and this sense of curious importance, the weeks were crowded; they were also thick, Ruth noticed, with a strange hothouse heat. She shed blankets from her bed and wore light clothing—summer dresses, or cotton shorts with the small, soft T-shirts her sons had worn as boys. The cats lost their winter fur in springtime clumps, and Ruth continued to hear bird and insect sounds at night. But little happened: Frida installed bath rails and taught Ruth how to lie down and sit up with the least strain on her back; she mopped and swept; she introduced pills recommended by a naturopath friend of George’s, which were supposed to help with memory and brain function and, being made of an ordinary orange kitchen spice, turned Ruth’s urine bright yellow; Jeffrey