She had been an attractive girl – some people had even called her beautiful. It wasn’t a style Mrs Graham admired. Men preferred blondes, and so did she. But Thea had quite good features, and if she were to give herself a little trouble she ought to be able to take five or six years off her age. Of course it wouldn’t go down at Grove Hill, which was full of girls who had been at school with her, but on a cruise among quite fresh people where she could allude to her as ‘my young daughter’ and throw in a smiling remark about girls always being too serious when they had just left school… She went on thinking along these lines, and presently came back to Mr Martin.

‘I think I might really ask him to come and see me. He will know that I cannot get down into the town.’

Althea had finished with the combs and the curlers. She was now putting things away in the washstand drawer. She said over her shoulder.

‘Why do you want to see him?’

‘Darling, to ask him about getting a good price for the house.’

A thought knocked insistently at Althea’s mind. She didn’t want to let it in, but it was difficult to keep it out. She couldn’t help wondering whether Mrs Harrison had told her mother that Nicholas Carey was back from wherever he had been for these five long years. It meant nothing, it couldn’t mean anything, but if Mrs Graham thought that it might, it could be a reason for her interest in a cruise. She said a little more sharply than she had meant to.

‘I saw him this morning, and I told him we didn’t want to sell.’

Mrs Graham turned round on the dressing-stool. She was flushed and shaking.

‘You never told me!’

‘I didn’t want to worry you.’

‘You didn’t want to tell me because you knew what I would say!’

‘Mother… please…’

‘You knew I would like to sell. You knew I wanted to get away from this place that was making me ill.’