And my own mother, who was standing behind me in that hall and who I have not mentioned since.
Peg Marrin, sixty-four, who had made up the back bedroom on the sixth of October before I was even discharged.
She heard the whole of it from four feet away. The kneeling, the ear, the kidneys, all of it.
And when my legs went she got under one of my arms and Edan got under the other and the two of them put me on a chair in her own hall, which is a thing I did not know until the December because I do not remember it.
And then she made four cups of tea and sat down and said: "Right. What does she need and when does she need it by?"
Not one word about him. Not then and not for about three weeks.
And in the November, when I was deep in being wronged, she said the only hard thing she has said to me in thirty-six years.
