Jill was at her sister’s for Christmas. She had taken the ferry that morning from her home on the Isle of Wight. A calm crossing and clear blue skies boded well. Her sister had met her at the Southampton terminal, and helped her load the boot with gifts and groceries. There was already snow on the mainland, and more forecast.

“I am so glad you came. Christmas would be a bore without you.” 

“Is daddy already here?” 

“What do you think! He arrived last night. You know what he’s like with the children. None of the rest of us can get a look in.” 

Ellie was five years younger, but already married with two children - Lily aged four, and Catherine aged five and a half. Her husband, Tom, was not all he could be, but then both girls were used to putting up with inadequate men: their father, George, had been a small man with a short temper. A shopkeeper in a small country town in Hampshire, Winchfield, he took offence at the least provocation, and was forever barring his customers. At the end of each day he brought his offended pride home to his wife and daughters, and expected them to pamper him back into good humour. As time passed, and the role became irksome to them all, he took offence at his wife and daughters, and, unable to bar them from their own home, enacted his little revenges on them in different ways. He would inflict upon his wife the silent treatment, stonewalling her sometimes for weeks. His daughters were spoken to grudgingly, sent early to bed, loaded with extra chores, and deprived of their usual treats. As they grew older, and were even less able to pander to their father’s wounded pride, he prevented them from going out in the evenings with friends, and then from meeting boys. He played the tyrant, and their mother was no match for him. When eventually, to his utter shock, she divorced him, it simply ratified his sense of himself as one of the world’s victims who had been mistreated even in his own house.