"Mother, I simply don't know how I am expected to share so many social events with Alison. Of course I don't mind her background, but its the way she holds herself that is so vile. Have you seen the way she sips her wine, and those trashy shoes that she wears? "
"Oh darling, you will find a way to cope. After all, we all make our little compromises in life to make it work."
"What about you and Daddy? What compromises did you have to make?"
"Me and Daddy are perfectly happy, and you will be too, darling."
But Mrs Dwynedowers did not do enough to calm Gretchen - was it a micro-expression or the tone of her voice that gave something away? One cannot hide a memory you see, for what the mind has forgotten, the body remembers. Even a glimmer of a past love, or a tinge of regret, will come to bear in the some way on the corner of one's mouth, or the quickening of one's breath, just as it might contort a minuscule synapse in the recesses of the brain.
"Is a memory an object? " thought Mrs Dwynedowers, "well, so what if it is just a surge of electrical charge that passes from molecule to molecule, tracing a now-forgotten trail, blazed so brightly when it was learnt long ago.
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