20 JANUARY 1996, Page 37

The Phone's Ring

that it was him. And she slept on, she who had broken her wrist charging to get to the phone first Months after the boy had left home and the wonderful woman he called his wife had remembered to stop buying Marmite he woke in the dead of the night in the scum of a night's breathing and knew from the sound of the phone with the soft wreathed look on her face that always put Jim in his place. I want to talk to my son.

Who was it said that? What with the snoring and the phone's ring, it could have been anyone.

Helen Dunmore