“I’m going to stop her allowance.”

“Let the courts deal with her. The power rests with you. Any judge will see that.”

Joan’s elbow hit the table beside her and an ashtray spilled onto the floor. “Why should I have to fight for him? He’s mine already. He loves me. He belongs here.” Her body shook. Across the park, somewhere, in some dishevelled room with her dishevelled, mad sister was her boy, and she wanted to tear out of the house, she wanted to run, she wanted to rip her sister’s eyes out.

“And he will be, legally. It’s the only way,” said Pat.

“I shall never let her see him again.” She cried great heaving sobs, her face wet, her hair bedraggled, her sleeves a mess.

“Darling,” Pat came and sat beside her, “you won’t have to stop her doing anything.” She put her arms around her. “After this, he shall never want to see her again.”

She missed supper. She couldn’t eat. She went to bed and couldn’t sleep. Every piece of her shouted to get him back, and visions of him tortured her through the dull slow hours till dawn. She got up, tired of waiting for light to seep in around the curtains. While Pat slept, she splashed cold water on her face and dressed quickly. As the sounds of breakfast began to filter through the house, she wrote to her mother.

Two hours later she waited in the hall for Pat to change into something warmer. A bitter wind knocked pigeons from the branches of the trees.

Pat came downstairs, wrapped in fur. “Have you ordered the car?”

“It’s outside,” said Joan, her own fur clipped to the neck.

They drove to the offices of Bircham & Co; from Bryanston Square past Marble Arch, whizzing along Park Lane to Victoria, and into the narrow streets of Westminster. A woman in tight, wiry glasses. They were offered refreshments while they waited in an anteroom of comfortable chairs and low tables. The last time she was here had been two years ago, with her mother.

Pat dropped a copy of The Lady on the table. “Do they always keep you waiting so?”

“Mother used to make him come to Bryanston Square.”

“That’s what we should have done.”

“But not when Ian came. She brought me here. She said we must modernise.”

Pat laughed. “What did your mother ever know about modern?”

“I suppose she feared I’d entertain him in my undergarments.”

“She was handing you over.”

“She wanted me to know where the office was, I suppose.”