CHAPTER 22I’ve never been quite sure how I got through the ordeal of “preparing” Jerry…or rather the ordeal of preparing myself to prepare her. As I look back on it it seems to me that that was infinitely worse than what actually followed. She was sitting up in bed with a deep blue maribou jacket on that an aunt of the children’s had given me for a summer evening wrap. It was marvellous with her sleep-rumpled copper curls and pale good face and autumn eyes. The smile she raised to me as I came in faded so abruptly that I knew I must be more alarmed myself than I’d thought. She put down the cup of chocolate in her hand. I remembered noticing that the hardly-touched breakfast Lilac had managed to get on her tray would have kept a Welsh miner and family for a week.
“What’s…the matter, Grace?
