They were all folded now and pressed down into the boxes and portmanteaus. She sat on the bed with Mark's sword across her knees, rubbing vaseline on the blade. Mark came and stood before her, looking down at her.
"Minky, I don't like going away and leaving Mamma with you…. When I went before you promised you'd be kind to her."
"What do I do?"
There was a groove down the middle of the blade for the blood to run in.
"Do? You do nothing. Nothing. You don't talk to her. You don't want to talk to her. You behave as if she wasn't there."
The blade was blunt. It would have to be sharpened before Mark took it into a battle. Mark's eyes hurt her. She tried to fix her attention on the blade.
"What makes you?"
"I don't know," she said. "Whatever it is it was done long ago."
"She hasn't got anybody," he said. "Roddy's gone. Dan's no good to her.
She won't have anybody but you."
"I know, Mark. I shall never go away and leave her."