The truth of her mother’s isolation should have pulled Vera up short. It was a vicious loneliness Daphne must have experienced, a loneliness with rows and rows of teeth on it. It should have stopped Vera in her tracks, that thought; it should have brought up some kind of compassion. It should have reminded her that Daphne had been alone for nearly two decades, trapped in a notorious house in a town that hated her.
