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college. That would be about 1960 or so. No sign of miniskirts yet, and probably they wouldn’t have been allowed in college.
    Then at last one of John McNabb, cradling her in the garden at the back of the house in which she now sat. His face was shadowed as he looked down at his baby daughter. She turned the page.
    Here it was at last, a genuine likeness. It was a black-and-white studio portrait, perhaps made for professional purposes. Maybe his newspaper printed the portrait with one of his cartoons from time to time. He looked out shyly from under a lock of hair, his mouth turned traditionally upward in a tiny smile, perhaps requested by the photographer. Nice, humorous, unremarkable. Was Mr. Bradshaw wrong? Did John McNabb turn out to be quite the wrong husband for the determined woman who had called herself to the end May McNabb?

CHAPTER 3
Bakemeats

    It was a long time since Eve had been to a funeral. The last one must have been—oh, poor Bella Porter, who committed suicide after she had been diagnosed as having womb cancer. Memory stirred great pity in her: Bella had always said she was an awful coward where pain was concerned, and pills and more pills had seemed to her an unpleasant lesser of two evils. Cancer . . . So often cancer these days. She looked down at her feet as a substitute for praying.
    She had been led to the front pews of dear old St. John the Evangelist, and she had been overwhelmed by nostalgia as the much-loved building cast its spell. It had figured prominently not in family occasions but in school and communal events during the nineteen years of her residence in Crossley. Now she rather wished she had insisted on being seated at the back. Quite apart from the fact that she could have seen the whole nave and the altar better, she would also have had the backs of people’s heads to recognize them by. Ensconced in the pews for family atthe front she had nothing but the occasional raised voice to guess who were taking their places behind her. She had a definite sense that the church was filling up. She couldn’t look around for fear she would be judged as assessing the turnout. Or even condemning the absentees. In fact it was a wonderful turnout, considering they must all be friends, colleagues, former pupils, even mere casual acquaintances. There was no family left, apart from her. And she no longer even had a partner to swell the number to two.
    â€œThat place is vacant, isn’t it? I’ll just squeeze past.”
    The voice came from the aisle, a couple of rows back. Eve knew it at once, or knew that she had known it, but now couldn’t place it. She had to restrain herself from peering around at the newcomer. It was a couple of minutes to eleven o’clock. The vicar had stressed that everything should be done to time, since the church was booked for a wedding in the afternoon and would need to be decorated. Eve felt satisfaction in this continuing chain of the vital milestones of most people’s lives. Perhaps she could look around when the coffin began its journey up the aisle. The voice was so individual: a cracked, assertive voice, one that assumed its right to bear witness, its duty to voice its opinions, however cranky and ill-informed they might be. A voice unheard since her childhood days, and only once then.
    Aunt Ada.
    But surely it couldn’t be Aunt Ada. Not that she was necessarily dead. She was only eight or nine years older than May, and in fact a cousin rather than an aunt. But the breach between the two women had been total, andAunt Ada surely would not want to attend the funeral. Her mother had not mentioned her for years—probably not since she, Eve, was in her teens. She had seen (and heard ) her once, at a family funeral, and had been fascinated. Apart from that, Eve had never met her and knew of her mainly through her mother’s hostility. Oh God—if it was Ada she would have to be asked to the funeral bakemeats