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the same, too, his lovely Mrs Totty, whom he’d known all his life. Burbling on, comforting, kind, her round face concerned as she tried to excuse the deteriorating condition of 16 Kelsey Road, even though it wasn’t remotely her responsibility.
    ‘You can’t do any more than you do,’ he reassured her. ‘Which is more than any of us have a right to expect in the circumstances.’
    ‘Oh, rubbish! If I can’t manage two mornings a week, after all these years, I don’t know what. I’d come in more, willingly, you know I would, but there’s my other cleaning job, and Joe, and there’s the grandchildren. Seven of’em, now, and their mums have to go out to work, Sam, you know how it is. Nobody can live on one wage nowadays, or nobody wants to, and that’s the truth.’
    Sam reached out for a chocolate Hobnob and thought it wiser not to mention her increasing age, which must also be a contributing factor. She really ought to be retired altogether. Her fingers were knobbly with arthritis, and he’d noticed how much more stiffly she was moving, but he knew she hated the idea of not being as active as she had been all her life: she was into her seventies but she’d always said it would be the beginning of the end if she’d nothing better to do than discuss her ailments. Apart from that, she wasn’t looking a scrap different – her hair had been resolutely dyed and was as richly brown as ever, done up in a neat perm. The nylon overall over the checked, pleated skirt
and a pink, round-necked jumper, the little gilt studs in her ears and the scent of violet talc were reassuringly as they’d always been.
    ‘I’m sure Dorrie’s only too glad you can come in at all,’ he said.
    ‘Yes, well.’ She looked as though she was about to say more, but hesitated, then changed the subject, smiling at him. ‘I must say, it’s grand to see you looking so well, Sam, dear. How’ve you got so brown, then, when they don’t have any sun down there? Come on, have another biscuit, you need feeding, a big chap like you, though you don’t look as though they’ve been starving you, I’ll say that! Isn’t it wonderful what they can do nowadays? Even down at the South Pole.’
    Sam smiled his slow, attractive smile and stretched his long legs. He hadn’t exactly been living on the fat of the land recently, while working as a geophysicist, part of an inter-disciplinary research unit on the Polar Ice Cap, but life had been reasonably civilised, the food had been quite amazing, considering. ‘There’s a lot more sun down there than up here, sometimes, and no, we haven’t been living on whale meat and pemmican, exactly.’
    ‘I can see that – oh, it’s grand to have you back, my lovey, we’ve all missed you, especially Dorrie. She’s been like a dog with two tails ever since she heard you were coming home, and no wonder. It’ll do her the world of good to have you here. Three years, it’s a long time when you’re knocking on, like we are.’
    He smiled, wondering what his Aunt Dorrie would think of that comparison. Mrs Totty could give Dorrie ten years, though despite that, and her hard life, she’d come out better on the whole. Dorrie had changed, not physically, but in some other, indefinable way … she was still the same odd, eccentric little person he’d always known, soft floppy hair pulled back from her face into a knot, a thick fringe falling over her eyes and seriously interfering with the big, round, owlish glasses. Still with the same soft, slow, solemn way of talking, and the sudden smile that, had he known it, echoed his own. A sweet contentment had always seemed part of her, though sometimes he thought he’d detected faint echoes of sadness. A regret, perhaps, for something that had never been, but it was hard to say what, so faintly and so occasionally was it glimpsed. Missed opportunities perhaps.
Dorrie had never had a career, never married, never, so far as he was aware, even had a love affair.
    Sam