“I don’t like this business with Mother,” Bee said in a voice of cultivated distress. “She looks keyed-up all the time. Like she’s worried about something but she’s not sure what it is. It’s Malcolm, of course. He’s got his jungle. What does she have? A huge airy kitchen with a stove that belongs in a three-star restaurant in the provinces. She put all her energy into that kitchen, but for what? It’s not a kitchen at all. It’s her life, her middle age. Baba could enjoy a kitchen like that. It would be a kitchen to her. To Mother it’s like a weird symbol of getting through a crisis, except she
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