Mrs Sandringham sat in the back of the motor car like the queen, weeping and excited. ‘But I know you, Dr Markham. You’ll just eat baked potatoes, or you’ll cook up that horrid pot of yours.’ ‘I’ll be perfectly fine. Besides, baked potatoes and my horrid pots got me through medical school very nicely.’ ‘That’s if you remember to eat at all. You’ll waste away if you don’t get more inside you.’ Watching Mrs Sandringham and her sister bustle about each other, making their first moves since childhood back into a shared household, Jean felt a surge of jealousy. She drank a last cup of strong tea, ate a slice of cake, and drove away with promises of visits. As a child, Jean would set herself hard tasks. The first had been to run non-stop around the garden when she was nine, because her father said girls had less stamina than boys. It took several attempts. On the first she got as far as the bottom wall. On the second she reached the compost heap. On the third, she was all the way into the kitchen garden, rows of cabbages either side of her, when she thought that if she didn’t stop, her heart would burst.
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