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comestibles which I had dumped on the kitchen table and still not put away made me heartsick. I felt as if someone should be looking after me, but had the sense to see that this attitude was dangerously unhealthy, even archaic. I still had the weekend to get through, and this I knew would be difficult. Weekends were supposed to be festive; they were to be anticipated joyfully. I had always found them somewhat problematic. I seemed to sleep badly on a Friday night, and of course towards the end of my mother’s life I hardly slept at all. She had died on a Sunday, which I knew would forever colour the day which even happy people find burdensome, at least towards the evening. I could do what everybody else did now, go to a six o’clock film, if that was what I wanted. That left the matter of food. I was by now quite hungry, and it was still only Friday. I resolved to telephone Wiggy and invite her, quite casually, out for a meal. In Wiggy’s company I should feel less awkward, less conspicuous; my bereaved state would be less obvious. And if necessary I should eat out every evening, early, on my way home from work. But I still longed to get back to the shop, and the Greek café round the corner, and Hester’s cakes. An extraordinary shift seemed to have taken place in my habits and customs. I suppose that this is the inevitable result of a death in the family.
    On the Saturday evening Muriel Collier telephoned to ask how I was. I thought that was good of her, and gratefully assured her that I was fine. My voice seemed strange to me, and evidently to Muriel as well, for I was told that I need not come back to work until I felt like it. I promised her that I would be in on Monday, trying not to sound too eager. Then I rang Wiggy, and suggested a meal, which I thought might inaugurate various other meals. I thought the timing was right: her lover never appeared at the weekend but devoted himself to familial pursuits in the Home Counties.
    ‘All right,’ she said cautiously. ‘Where would you suggest?’
    ‘Oh, we’ll find something,’ I promised her. ‘I’ll pick you up around seven.’
    So I did, but our dinner was not a success. Two women on their own amid the Saturday night revellers did not make a good impression. There is a stigma, even now. I said as much to Wiggy, who did not particularly want to be reminded of this. Not that her lover ever takes her out for a meal. It is rather that his presence in her life gives her a feeling of being accompanied, and this, however illusory, confers a certain composure. For one dreadful minute in the course of the evening I saw that she felt sorry for me. That was no doubt why she said, ‘This is fun. Let’s do it again.’ But the pasta (which, come to think of it, I could have cooked at home) seemed hard to digest, and the noisy restaurant was beginning to give me a headache. I longed to be out in the homegoing streets, alone, though I knew that I was condemned to such occasions for the foreseeable future. Wiggy knew this too, but we were honour bound to observe the proprieties.
    ‘I’ll ring you tomorrow,’ she said, with a tentative squeeze of my arm. And we parted, I think, gratefully, which merely added to my sadness.
    I walked the usual route home, slipping from shadow to light to shadow again. The flat was warm when I let myself in; although it was late May the weather was still wintry. I thought I might spend the following day, Sunday, tidying my mother’s room, throwing away all the childproof pill bottles which at the end remained unopened. I went to bed discouraged, but I slept deeply and woke with a slightly lighter heart. I spent the morning and a good part of the afternoon tidying and cleaning: this was no doubt how I should spend all my remaining Sundays. This thought made me sad all over again, and I wentto bed far too early. That is why, perversely, I overslept on the Monday morning, and was late arriving at the shop. Muriel raised her eyebrows slightly