This extract is taken from the novel The Visit by Catherine Aldridge.

The Visit (extract)

Helena had been home for three days before her mother mentioned the money.

"I'm not asking for an accounting," her mother said, setting down the plates with the careful precision of someone who was, in fact, asking for an accounting. "I just want to understand how things are."

5 "Things are fine."

"I know things are fine. I mean in terms of—" Her mother made a gesture with her hand that could have meant anything. "In terms of how you're managing."

"I'm managing."

Her mother sat. She unfolded her napkin with two precise folds, the way she had always
10 done, and laid it across her lap. Then she looked up.

"Your father and I would like to help."

"You don't need to help."

"We'd like to, Helena." The use of her full name. The slight pause before like. Helena had grown up learning to read the intervals in her mother's sentences, the way a musician
15 learns rests. "We don't want you to feel you can't ask."

"I don't feel that."

"Good." Her mother picked up her fork. "That's good."

They ate. Outside, the garden was doing whatever it did in late October, going brown and particular. Helena watched her mother cut her food into pieces before eating any of it,
20 the way she had always done, and felt, as she often did in this room, both entirely known and entirely misunderstood.

How and to what effect is dialogue used in this text?