‘I can’t sleep in the box room. I’m not even sure it’s long enough for a bed.’
‘I agree,’ said Samuel.
An awkward silence settled around the room.
‘I’m going to have to move out,’ said Ros slowly. It was less a question, more a statement of fact.
‘It might be the push you need,’ replied her mother encouragingly.
Ros looked at her cautiously.
‘What do you mean? The push I need?’
‘Darling, you know how much we love you, but your father and I have been talking, and we think that living here is holding you back in your career.’
‘How is it holding me back?’
Another look of complicity.
‘Rosamund, you have a masters degree from the London School of Economics. You are as smart as a whip and the world is your oyster. We know you love what you’re doing . . .’ Ros could tell her mother was treading carefully here, but she could predict what was coming next. ‘But when are you going to get a proper job?’
There. There it was. She almost felt a sense of triumph when she heard it.
‘I run a political pressure group, Mother. We have an office and I employ—’
‘A real job, Ros,’ she interrupted. ‘With a salary and a pension. Something with prospects. This isn’t the Student Union any more, darling.’
Ban the bomb, troops out, crush apartheid; Rosamund had drunk it all in, and it had filled her up like oxygen. Within weeks of arriving at the LSE, she had organised a sit-in at the university refectory in protest at the sacking of a porter, revelling in the fuss and, yes, she had to admit, the power. It had fizzled out after two days when her fellow protesters began drifting off to lectures, but it had been a revelation to Rosamund, and she had carried on fighting against perceived injustice. She couldn’t believe her mother was dismissing it as some sort of ill-conceived hobby.
‘Of course things might be different if you were married. If you were supported. Janet down the road does wonderful work for charity, but her husband is an accountant, brings home good money.’
Ros was now feeling hot with anger. ‘What I do isn’t about making money. It’s about making a difference.’
‘How about making a living?’ said her mother more tartly. ‘You can’t even afford a roof over your head. Now, I have to go and make a phone call.’
‘Who are you calling? Grandma?’ Ros said childishly.
‘I’ll leave you two to talk.’ Valerie didn’t even glance in her daughter’s direction as she left the room.
When she’d gone, the tension subsided a little. Her mother had always been the more fiery of her parents, a woman never afraid of speaking her mind, and the two women regularly locked horns. At least Ros knew where she got her feistiness from.
‘If it’s any consolation, I’m not looking forward to them moving in either,’ said Samuel, finishing the last of his stew.
Rosamund managed a thin smile.
‘I remember when we went on holiday with them to Worthing. You thought the bomb had dropped – it was Grandad’s snoring through the caravan walls.’
Neither of them spoke for a moment.
‘So what is this, Dad?’ Ros said finally. ‘Tough love?’
‘You know this will always be your home. There will always be a bed for you even if I have to sleep in the greenhouse. But your mother has a point about getting out there.’
‘You don’t approve of my work at the Direct Action Group? You of all people?’
‘Of course I do,’ he said, as father and daughter looked sadly at one another.
The Baileys – the Bazelskis as they had been then – had come to England just before the war as refugees from Hungary, where they had seen politics swing back and forth with deadly force until it had b