‘I’ll do my best. I know it’s such a bore for you.’ ‘It’s just that we have our buyers’ tasting on Thursday evening. And you know Emily has a dance class.’ Emily, seven years old, dutiful and silent, sat by her mother’s side reading School Friend. Mother and daughter were very close. ‘She may have to miss it,’ said Harriet. ‘Do you mind terribly, darling?’ She stroked her daughter’s long ash-blonde hair with gentle fingers. ‘You know I hate dance class,’ said Emily. ‘Yes, darling, but everyone has to learn to dance.’ There was no reproach in her voice. It was well understood in their little family that they preferred evenings at home to noisy parties. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve had a chance to do anything about supper,’ said Hugo. ‘Emily’s had a soft-boiled egg,’ said his wife. ‘I don’t want anything at all. You know how it is on my quiet days.’ Harriet’s ‘quiet days’ were times of silent suffering. She would lie in her chair, her head pulsing with pain, overwhelmed by an unexplained fatigue.
