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so ship-shape to anyone not brought up to them. She’d gone to pick apples, or play with the dog in the garden, something that they thought she might like doing, while they sat and talked. Then, after getting cold out there, she’d come back in the house again. She had hung about outside the room where they were sitting, George and Eve and George’s cousin and his wife. And her father was at home because he was English and related, and quite pleased to slot back into the rhubarb crumble for a short while, and Eve was the adored French wife who was never overwhelmed by anyone, least of all the comfortable English cousins with their huge biscuit tins and calendar of Devon hedges. At the funeral, the feeling came back complete, of being an equivocal age and size and nationality, of being a girl on her own, someone tacked on to her parent’s relationship and not part of a family. And much as she wanted to be George’s representative at his funeral, as well as his next of kin, she felt cut off, an outsider. Her age and size had been sorted out by time, she had stopped being thirteen and all arms and legs, but not the rest. She still felt alone. Everyone knew who she was, though. She had George’s eyes.
    Don and Judith had been good enough to lay on tea afterwards. The mourners were all glad of it, hot and sustaining, most welcome, though some of them realised that they’d developed a tremor since they last tried to balance a cup in a saucer. The spoons were abandoned, and the small bone china plates, with the cake and the cake crumbs at a tipsy slant, ended up in odd places, half way under the sofa and on top of the television. Once it turned five o’clock Don opened a bottle of wine. In many ways it was easier than tea. They talked fondly of George. They’d all liked him. There was no equivocation. They said he wouldn’t have wanted to linger, or lose his faculties, or his marbles and they were partly talking of themselves, and one or two were on the way there. They said he had missed Eve and there weren’t many marriages like that nowadays. That made them conscious ofSylvie. As she didn’t have her husband with her, and failed to mention him, they were left uncertain of her marital position. She wasn’t certain of it herself. Her father’s death had shifted something. Paul had said he wouldn’t come to the funeral. He would look after the restaurant and Lucien. She couldn’t see what he was avoiding and didn’t try to persuade him. He made it sound positive, as if he were doing it for her benefit. So she made the journey on her own, lonely and cross at first, then she forgot him.

4
    DON’S LETTER ARRIVED a week after Sylvie’s return. He must have sat down and replied to hers immediately. She didn’t open it.
    She held two distinct and contrary sets of thoughts about Don. She knew clearly what kind of man he was; unbending, inhibited, well intentioned, and most unlikely to write a good letter. Her father had chosen him for his ability to play a fair game of chess and his availability. He lived round the corner and had a comfortable sitting room. She knew, for a fact, that he would never tell her anything interesting. He would bore her with information, particular and general; holidays, politics recycled from his newspaper, planning permission and problems with transport. He would keep count of wet Julys, put a number to them. She would have trouble replying. She could see herself sitting there. Spontaneity would be out of the question. What could she ever want to say to him urgently? She would have to pretend to be like him to manage at all. And yet, after she’d written to him, she felt buoyed up, almost elated; though it wasn’t real free-floating elation. She felt as if she had pushed herself against a tight thread that was barring her way, and that, for a moment, the pressure was so great that her feet left the ground. Paul noticed. He