The Betrayal of Trust by Susan Hill

fought her own battles, no quarter given and none expected, since she was two years old.
    There was home-roasted ham with baked potatoes and salad. Penny did not eat any form of pudding so Jocelyn spooned coffee into the cafetière and took out a bottle of Beaujolais, hesitated, tried to work the corkscrew and failed, as she had guessed she would.Left it for Penny.
    Then she went to sit down on the wicker chair in the conservatory. There was a little warmth still left in the sun. This, she thought. There is this and it is now. The minutes were separating themselves and taking on a new significance.
    ‘Are you out there?’
    Penny. Tall. Hair pulled back so tightly it gave her a facelift. Wide-apart eyes. The eyes she got from her father,like the colouring, but where had the height come from? Jocelyn supposed it was useful, for a woman barrister in court.
    She loved Penny. But she had never felt entirely comfortable with her, always been anxious to keep her happy, not to annoy her, since she was a child – kowtowing to her, she sometimes thought. Not that Penny had been spoiled, or had tantrums if she had not got her own way, butshe had had an air of seeing through her mother, seeing through an argument, seeing through a fudge or an evasion, a rationality about her from the start. Jocelyn had been head of a Civil Service department for years, as competent and authoritative in her sphere as Penny, but the moment she arrived home that authority had always seemed to fall away. When she retired, it had gone altogether, thoughwhen alone she felt confident enough. She had done an Open University degree, then an MPhil, and had planned to continue, until she had woken one morning wondering why and could find no satisfactory reason. Since then, she had felt increasingly overtaken by her daughter, overtaken and overlooked, she occasionally thought in self-pity.
    ‘Did the carpet people come?’ she asked now as Penny camethrough with a glass of wine for them both.
    ‘They did, all sorted. I realised I never liked the colour of the old one anyway. Thank you, Mother.’
    ‘I didn’t do much. Once I’d found the cleaning firm and the carpet people …’
    ‘All the same.’ Penny raised her glass.
    ‘How’s the case?’
    She shrugged. Talk about it, Jocelyn willed her, talk about the case, the court, the jury, what you think theoutcome might be. Talk.
    ‘Did you see the doctor?’
    Jocelyn got up. ‘I’ll just put the ham on the table. Could you get the potatoes out of the lower oven?’
    ‘Don’t change the subject, Mother.’
    ‘I wasn’t. I was postponing it. I’m rather hungry.’
    Postponing it. Yes.
    ‘Anyway, did you?’
    ‘Let me say what I have to say when I want to say it, which is not yet. I want to eat.’
    Penny held up her hands.

    The sun still shone. They took coffee into the conservatory. Two comfortable chairs. A neighbouring cat. An early butterfly.
    ‘The doctor,’ Penny said.
    Now that it had come, she felt entirely calm. And quite sure.
    ‘I have motor neurone disease,’ she said.
    She had not imagined Penny’s immediate reaction but would have assumed a moment’s silence to digest the information and then a battery ofquestions and cross-questions, requests for second opinions, statement of medical options. Penny had been born with a lawyer’s mind.
    Instead, after a split second, she simply burst into silent tears. Jocelyn was so taken aback she got up and went into the kitchen, where she stood looking out onto the bricks of the side wall, counting them, making her eyes trace the lines of mortar – along, down,across, down, down, along …
    Penny would need the time to compose herself. She had not, to Jocelyn’s knowledge, cried since childhood and the circumstances that might make her do so were unimaginable, other than in reaction to sheer physical pain.
    But when she went back, Penny was still sitting with tears on her cheeks, head bent. Jocelyn put her hand tentatively on her