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over for lunch, and the Sadlers, it’s a celebration, Nellie, we’ve got something to tell you, we’re going to get married, Nellie.’
    He says nothing. They have stopped. He looks wooden, standing there beside her. He is wearing grey flannel trousers and a blazer. The trousers are baggy at the knee. I say nothing.

    Laura said, ‘Hugh and me. When can that be? Oh, I remember – you took it, Nellie. That old box Brownie you had. Not long after the war.’

    Nellie gets out of the car; she is all blown about, she must have driven with the hood down, she looks a mess. Hugh’s arm is round me; we walk together towards her; I say to him, ‘Darling, you tell her.’ I kiss her and say, ‘You’re just in time, it’s a celebration, Nellie, Hugh’s got something to tell you.’ Hugh says, ‘Well, Nellie, there’s going to be a wedding, we want you to know first of all.’
    I am wearing my New Look dress – long, long. I feel it brush my calves when I move. It has a petticoat that rustles.
    Nellie says, ‘I’m not entirely surprised. Congratulations. That’s marvellous.’ She takes her suitcase out of the car. She says, ‘You’ll have to learn how to get your hands dirty now, Laura.’ She goes into the house; there are creases all across the back of her skirt.

    ‘But it’s that dig I was after, the Charlie’s Tump dig. Ah, it’s in this one. Goodness – who are all these people? There’s me, and Hugh, and you, Nellie. And Kate, of course, in a dear little sunsuit or something, it must have been hot. And that’s Brenda Carstairs, I think. But who on earth…’
    Nellie’s fumbling speech distorts words; it is hard to catch, sometimes, just what she has said.
    ‘Oh,’ said Laura, ‘Carlos. Of course. Carlos Fuego – yes, he was there wasn’t he, that summer. Don’t bang the coffee cups down like that, Kate darling, you’ll break them and they’re the good ones. You’re off to bed, are you? Use my bathroom, darling, and Tom can have the spare one to himself.’

    Tom, waking in a strange room, experienced a fleeting moment of confusion and spiritual detachment. He lay in a void that had no certainties beyond the body, his body, between sheets that were unnaturally crisp and clean; he groped for time and place, for why and when, and heard the voice of his future mother-in-law outside the door. Facts flooded in, and with them a fond reaction to that good smell of coffee coming from somewhere, and a lingering sense of deprivation: Kate had been tiresomely standoffish last night. ‘Honestly,’ she had said, ‘honestly you can’t, not here, I really am sorry, I mean it’s just as bad for me.’ She had stood outside her bedroom door, in striped schoolgirl pyjamas dredged up from some forgotten drawer. ‘ Why not?’ ‘The bed squeaks, and Ma’s next door.’ ‘Oh, for goodness sake, Kate!’ He had stumped off in discomfort to a solitary night.
    Now he contemplated, in the morning light, the room, with its slightly bleak, stripped-for-action look of all guest rooms: flower prints on the wall, one or two second-best ornaments. His own parents did not have a guest room; Kate, last month, had slept in what was still, when he came home from college, his brother Kevin’s room, with school photos pinned above the bed and football banners and old shoes tumbling from the cupboard. She had been perfectly happy. She had settled herself in like a dog turning round and round in an agreeable chair, eating greedily, in instant accord with his parents, avidly watching the television all evening. He had taken her to the pub, where she had hinted she would really rather get back. ‘I thought you must be bored.’
    ‘I haven’t ever actually seen a colour telly before,’ she had said. He had capitulated to the yearning in her face and taken her home again.
    His mother had thought her a nice girl, no nonsense about her. His father had patted her on the arm at parting, indicating approval. Kate, on the way