Elizabeth took her hands off the chairback and put them over her ears.
‘Stop it—’
‘I’m going,’ Dale said. She sounded out of breath. She was rummaging in her bag for her car keys. ‘I’m going, and I’ll be back. I’ll be back whenever I want to because this is my home, this is where I belong, this is where I come from and always will.’
Elizabeth said nothing. She slid her hands round her head from covering her ears to covering her eyes. She heard Dale’s bag zip close.
‘It would be nice,’ Dale said, ‘if you didn’t tell Dad about this. But I expect you will. And if you do, then I will. I’ll have to.’ She paused and then said with emphasis, ‘Won’t I?’
And then she went out of the kitchen and the front doors, slamming both behind her.
‘What’s all this?’ Tom said.
He stood in the doorway of his bedroom, and peered into the half-dark. Elizabeth lay on the bed, as she had lain for several hours, with the curtains drawn. ‘Are you ill?’
‘No.’
He moved closer.
‘What is it, sweetheart?’
Elizabeth said, without moving, ‘You saw.’
‘I saw a fair old muddle in the kitchen, certainly. And shopping all over the hall floor. Basil, needless to say, has found the butter. I thought perhaps you weren’t feeling too good—’
‘I’m not.’
Tom lowered himself on to the side of the bed and put his hand on her forehead.
‘Headache?’
‘No.’
‘What—’
Elizabeth was lying on her side, still dressed, under a blanket. She said, looking straight ahead and not at Tom, ‘Dale came.’
‘Did she?’
‘She was here when I got back from shopping. She was in the process of turning out the kitchen cupboards.’
Tom took his hand away from Elizabeth’s face.
‘Oh dear.’
‘We had a row,’ Elizabeth said. She rolled over on to her back and looked at Tom. ‘I told her she mustn’t just let herself into the house whenever she pleased any more, and the row began.’
Tom wasn’t quite meeting Elizabeth’s eyes.
‘And how did it end?’
‘With Dale saying she would go on letting herself in whenever she wanted to because this was her home and always would be.’
Tom got slowly off the bed and walked towards the window, pushing the curtains back to reveal quiet cloudy afternoon light.
‘Did Pauline come into it?’
‘Oh yes,’ Elizabeth said. She stared up at the ceiling. ‘She always does.’
‘What did you say?’
‘About Pauline? That I couldn’t negotiate with a ghost. That Dale was too old to go on believing her mother was a saint.’
‘She wasn’t,’ Tom said. He had his back to Elizabeth. She turned her head to look at him, outlined against the window.
‘I’m relieved to hear you say it—’
‘She was very like Dale, in some ways, but with better self-control.’ He turned towards Elizabeth. ‘Sweetheart. I’m so sorry.’
‘Yes.’
‘Have you been up here ever since she left?’
‘Yes.’
‘Poor love. Poor Elizabeth.’
Elizabeth struggled up into a half-sitting position, propping her shoulders against the bed’s padded headboard.
‘Tom.’
‘Yes?’
‘What are you going to do?’
He came back to the bed and sat down beside Elizabeth.
‘What do you want me to do?’
She closed her eyes.
‘That’s not the right way round.’
‘I don’t follow you—’
‘It isn’t,’ Elizabeth said, ‘a question of what I want you to do, it’s a question of what you want to do yourself, not just for my sake, but even more for our future sakes, jointly, for the sake of this marriage we’re embarking on.’
‘You don’t sound very enthusiastic about it—’
‘It’s not lack of enthusiasm I feel,’ Elizabeth said. ‘It’s fear.’
‘Fear?’
She picked up the edge of the blanket that covered her and began to pleat it between her fingers.
‘Fear of what?’ Tom said.
‘Dale.’
Tom leaned forward and put his head in his hands.
‘Oh my God.’
‘Can’t you imagine?’ Elizabeth said, fighting with sudden tears. ‘Can’t you imagine trying to be married here with both of us straining to catch the sound of her key in the lock?’
‘It wouldn’t be like that—’
‘It might!’ Elizabeth cried, sitting up and dropping the blanket. ‘If she got in a state about something, or jealous, or lonely, she might come in all the time, any time, demanding your attention, insisting on her right to come home, informing me, as she did today, that I’ll never belong here however hard I try, however much I love you, because I haven’t got what you’ve all got, what you’ve had, I just haven’t got what it takes to make you happy!’
Tom took his hands away from his face and put his arms around Elizabeth. He said, in a fierce whisper against her hair, ‘I’m so sorry, so sorry—’
Elizabeth said nothing. She turned her face so that their cheeks were touching, and then, after a few moments, she gently but firmly disengaged herself.
‘Help me,’ Tom said. ‘Help me to decide what to do.’
Elizabeth began to extricate herself from the blanket, and to inch across the bed away from him.
‘I’m afraid,’ she said politely, ‘that it isn’t my decision.’
‘Elizabeth—’
‘Yes.’
‘I can’t change the locks of this house against my own daughter!’
Elizabeth reached the far side of the bed and stood up.
‘We don’t have keys to Dale’s flat. We never go there. We’re never asked there.’
‘But Dale was almost born in this house—’
‘I know. That’s one of the reasons why I wanted to sell it and move to another house, with no associations.’
‘But Rufus—’
‘I know about Rufus. I accept the Rufus argument.’
Tom stood up, too. He said, ‘I’ll go downstairs and clear up. Why don’t you have a bath?’
‘I’d love a bath, but it won’t make me feel any differently.’
‘You want me to tell Dale—’
‘No!’ Elizabeth shouted. She raised her fists and beat herself lightly on the sides of her head. ‘No! Not what I want! What you want for us, for you and me, because you can see what will happen if things go on like this!’
‘But they won’t. These are teething troubles, the shock of the new. We have so much going for us, so much, we love each other, Rufus loves you, Lucas will love you, too, any minute. We mustn’t get things out of proportion. Dale’s just in a state while she gets used to the idea of you. I’m so sorry she’s upset you—’
‘Shut up,’ Elizabeth said.
‘What?’
‘Stop talking. Stop mouthing all this stuff at me.’
Tom said angrily, ‘I’m trying to explain—’
‘No, you’re not, you’re trying to talk yourself out of having to face what’s really the matter.’
‘Which is?’
Elizabeth took a few steps towards the door. Then she took a breath.
‘That Dale is neurotically insecure and possessive, and that if you don’t do something about it now you’ll have her for life.’