“Servants never listen to me,” said Pat, the covers up to her neck. Sometimes she looked as if she had too much chin for such small eyes – the distance between her features only just made it, as if she poised on the brink of physical catastrophe but never quite toppled over. She was designed for interiors, Joan had often thought it – anything with too much sky made her seem vapid, as if she might be swallowed by a cloud, or rise with the fog, but in this room of low ceilings and broad bed, heavy curtains and Persian rugs she looked beautiful. Tall, dark-haired, acute. Joan could remember the first time she saw her any time she wanted to – she’d seared it onto her mind and gone over it and over it, producing different versions like an artist who cannot let go, hugging it to her, never wanting to paint anything else. Pat’s backside shaking and jiggling with the shake and jiggle of her arm as she scrubbed her way down a corridor at Charing Cross. Other nurses looked strapped into their uniforms, but Pat had made it look like a choice.

“I need a drink before my bath. Will you ring?”

Joan pressed the bell. “Bloody hell.” She lay beside Pat, on top of the blanket, squashing her.

“Your family’s scandals do bore me,” said Pat.

“As opposed to other people’s?”

“I go where I’m needed.”

“I need you,” said Joan.

“And as you well know, I need you,” answered Pat, but she smiled as she said it and patted Joan’s bottom.

“We’ll get a flat together,” said Joan.

“You always say that.”

“I mean it this time. We need to get away from all this—”

“Money?” laughed Pat. “By the sounds of it you’re going to have a windfall.”

“You mustn’t talk like that. I don’t need it anyway. Mother said I’d always be all right.”

“Even if she knew we’re Sapphists to our core?”

“She wouldn’t know the meaning of the word, and she wouldn’t care. Look at Vita and Violet.”

“Must I?”

“Mother thinks all they do is hold hands. She thinks Vita’s seduced Violet with books.”

“Hah!” Pat roared quickly and laid her head back on the pillows.

“She feels sorry for me. She thinks no one wanted to marry me, that I couldn’t find a chap.”

There was a knock on the door.

“Drinks!” said Pat, rising from the bed.