“Of course, we were upset when Patrick broke up with her. I felt absolutely terrible for her,” continued Maureen. “She didn’t have any family here, you see, she grew up in Tasmania, so we were like her family.”

“I’m sure Ellen doesn’t want to hear all this,” said Patrick.

“I don’t mind,” said Ellen, which was the understatement of the century.

“People fall out of love,” said George. “You can’t blame him for how he felt.”

“I know that, George,” said Maureen irritably. “It doesn’t stop me from feeling for the poor girl.”

“She needs to let Patrick be now,” said George. “This has gone on long enough.”

“She was like a mother to Jack.” Maureen ignored her husband and talked directly to Ellen.

“You should have let her keep seeing Jack,” said Simon to Patrick.

“How many times do I have to say this? She never asked to see him,” said Patrick. “As soon as I said I wanted to end it, she just went crazy, completely, certifiably crazy.”

“Her heart was broken,” said Maureen.

“Whatever, I didn’t think Jack was safe around her.”

“Also, her mother had just died,” said Maureen.

“Yeah, your timing sort of sucked,” said Simon.

“She was very close to her mother,” said Maureen to Ellen. “They spoke on the telephone every single day. My boys would go crazy if I tried to speak to them every day! Although, of course, I’m sure it’s different with daughters.” She looked wistful for a moment. “Do you speak to your mother every day, Ellen?”

“No.” Ellen smiled, although they did actually e-mail or text or have some form of communication nearly every day.

“Saskia’s father died when she was very young, you see, and she had no sisters or brothers, so her mother was all the family she had,” said Maureen. “She took her mother’s death very hard.”

“It was a month after her mother had died,” said Patrick. “Her mother had been sick for a whole year. How much longer was I meant to wait? I didn’t think it was fair to her to keep pretending.”

“A month is nothing,” said Simon.

Ellen privately agreed.

“Listen to Mr. Sensitive here. You broke up with your last girlfriend by text message!” said Patrick.

“It was a very caring text message. Anyway, I wasn’t living with her.”

“When Patrick first went into business for himself, he was very busy, obviously, and Saskia started working part-time so she could look after Jack.” Maureen was directing all of her conversation at Ellen. “She really was a wonderful mother to him.”

“Colleen was his mother,” said Patrick.

“Well, of course she was, darling, but Colleen wasn’t there.”

“Which wasn’t her fault.”

“Of course it wasn’t, I’m just trying to be fair to Saskia, and to say that she did a wonderful job.”

“Colleen would have done it better. And Colleen wasn’t crazy.”

“You never dumped Colleen,” said Simon. “So you don’t know.”

“I do know,” said Patrick. “I do know. And anyway, I would never have dumped Colleen.” There was a perceptible tremor of emotion in his voice that caused a hush around the table. Ellen saw that everyone was trying not to look at her. She felt Maureen’s excellent roast lamb and baked potatoes sitting lumpily in her stomach. Well, naturally he’s still in love with his dead wife. The damned girl had to go and die before she had time to get boring or annoying.

Patrick’s father took a deep breath and smiled at Ellen without quite meeting her eyes. “Well, I want to hear more about the hypnotism business.”

Ellen smiled weakly. They had already talked at length about the “hypnotism business” over dinner.

“I read somewhere that Hitler used hypnosis,” said Simon.

“Most politicians are experts at conversational hypnosis patterns,” began Ellen, automatically. She was asked this question all the time when she did speaking engagements. “Simple things, like repetition—”

“There’s an ad on TV at the moment,” said Patrick, looking down at the table. “I don’t know what it’s for, but it’s got a man in a swimming pool and someone’s old bloody bandage is floating in the water and it gets stuck to his mouth, and he pulls it off and throws it away, with this sort of all-over shudder, like, get it off, get it off.”

“I know the one. It’s for a car,” said Simon.

“What’s an old bandage got to do with cars?” Maureen frowned.

“The point is that every time I see Saskia’s car in the rear-vision mirror, or I get another one of her letters ranting and raving about God knows what, or an e-mail, or a text, or I have to listen to her voice on my answering machine, or she delivers a bunch of f**king flowers—I’m sorry for swearing, Mum, but—roses, to my work, I feel like that guy in the ad, I just want to get it off, get it off.”

“She sent you roses?” said Maureen. “She sent flowers to a man?”

“So that’s why I don’t want to hear that Saskia was a great mother, or that my timing sucked when I broke up with her,” said Patrick. “If I did wrong by her, I have paid the price. I have paid and paid and paid.”