Tomorrow's ghost

this, who were immature in some areas, were apt to be precocious in others.

They were waiting for her to say something.

'Your Father is very much my senior.' That was a statement they could both understand. 'So I don't get to see his ... print-out ... any more than you see your reports.'

Jane swallowed her mouthful. 'We do see our reports,' she said. 'And I bet Father's seen your print-up - print- out, I mean.'

'I expect he has.' And now to business. 'I'm sorry to hear about your mother.'

'What does your husband do?' Sally's hitherto impeccable manners suddenly deserted her. 'Does he work for Father?'

'My husband is dead.'

'How?' said Jane.

Nannie was prettily revenged. 'He was a soldier.'

'A soldier - ?' Jane regarded her with interest. 'Like Father, was he?'

'Tais-toi!' snapped Sally. 'I'm awfully sorry, Frances.'

'So am I,' said Jane quickly. 'What rotten luck!'

'Shut up,' said Sally. 'Our mother died nine years ago, that's what the police think.

After seven years a missing person is presumed to be dead, anyway.'

Frances was beginning to feel out of her depth. 'Is that so?' she said inadequately.

'That's right,' agreed Jane in a totally matter-of-fact voice. 'Like in the war. There's

'Missing, believed killed in action', and there's 'Missing, presumed killed in action', and there's just plain 'Missing'. Maman was 'Missing', but after seven years it's the same as

'Missing, presumed killed in action'' She nodded at Frances. ''Presumed' is really when they don't actually know, but it's the most likely thing. When they've got some evidence

- like with Nannie's husband, Father was there in the trench with him when the Chinese attacked, and saw him get shot, but then he had to go to another bit of the trench, and then they were shelled, you see - ' she nodded again ' - our side shelled them. Father called them up on the wireless and said 'There are hundreds and hundreds of Chinese here, and only a few of us, so if you shell us you're going to kill a lot more of them - ''

'He didn't say that at all,' cut in Sally. 'Father had built this sort of tunnel, and he retreated into it with his men. It was what they'd planned to do if things got really bad.

Father had it all planned, exactly what they were going to do, Frances.' '

'Well, it was still jolly brave - they gave him a medal for it,' said Jane.

'I didn't say it wasn't. I just said it was planned.'

'All right, all right! Anyway ... when they came out of the tunnel, and drove the Chinese off the hill - it was a hill they were on, just above a river - when they got back to the trench there was a shell-hole where Nannie's husband had been, so they had to make it 'Missing, believed', that's all I'm saying.'

Frances groped for a suitable reaction. Jane was clearly determined to inform her, apart from the fine distinctions of the military casualty list, that her father was a gallant officer, while Sally, for her part, favoured intelligence above bravery, and was equally determined to establish that. Unfortunately it was not the information she required from them.

'I see.' Yet she didn't really see at all.

A hill in Korea, a quarter of a century or more ago: how many children - how many adults, for that matter - knew anything about that old war? How much did she herself know?

She shook herself free of it. She wasn't concerned with RSM Hooker, of the Mendip Borderers, or even with Captain Butler, Mendip Borderers (attached). She was concerned with Major and Mrs Butler.

But she still couldn't think of anything to say.

'So that was what happened to our mother,' said Jane.

'I'm sorry' would hardly do. And in any case, she'd already said it once. If anything, she was now further away from the vital question than before these unnerving children had re-opened the Korean War.

'But then, it was probably all for the best,' continued Jane philosophically. 'It probably wouldn't have lasted, the way it was going.'

It wouldn't have lasted. It was all for the best - the way it was going?

It wouldn't have lasted?

'Lots off the girls at school are in the same boat,' Jane nodded at her. 'Baggers says the one-parent family is going to be the big social problem of the 1980s, with the present rate of divorce.'

It wouldn't have lasted.

'But that doesn't take account of re-marriages.' Sally rested one elbow on the table and looked intensely at Frances. 'What do you think of second marriages, Frances?'

'I haven't really thought about them.' The question momentarily unbalanced Frances just as she was zeroing in on Jane. 'I don't know ... What do you mean, 'it wouldn't have lasted', dear?'

'I think second marriages are a good thing,' said Jane. 'I mean, it stands to reason that you know better what to look for the second time round - 'Marry in haste and repent at leisure' is what Baggers says, and she could be