“She’ll enjoy that,” said Joan. The afternoon stretched before her: Douglas in a panic, Enid in a depressed fizz. She’d rather put her head in the oven than spend the afternoon with either of them. She’d hadn’t seen him since the spring, not long after their unfortunate meeting in the bar of the Adelphi. He’d found her at home one afternoon and wondered if he might have a quiet word.

“You see, a man might have his jollies,” he’d said, trying desperately hard to be casual. She hadn’t felt like rescuing him from his awkwardness. She’d lit a cigarette and watched him squirm. “What with Enid laid up, and everything. Now you won’t make a fuss of it, will you? Not that there’s anything to make a fuss of, you understand. It’s really just a bit of nonsense.”

“I’m sure she’d be thrilled to hear that.”

“Now, look here – you’re not going to tell her are you?”

“I was referring to Miss Wormald.”

“How do you know her name?”

“Everyone knows her name, Douglas.”

“Everyone?”

“Oh, do be a man,” said Joan. “It’s hardly front-page news. Man takes mistress. I hate to tell you this, but you’re not the first.”

“Now, look here.” He’d tried very hard to be a man then. “We all have our little secrets, don’t we?”

She’d asked him to leave after that.

She hadn’t seen Enid since last summer. How would she be now? No doubt the same. A depressed fizz, her pain strewn about like driftwood, a new baby to trumpet. Babies were nothing but a bore. Who cared until they were grown enough to stop puking and start holding a decent conversation? Fagus had been able to hold a decent conversation by the time he was three; better than his parents, anyway, and a lot more fun. In his last letter, Douglas had said he was really quite up and about, as if that made up for everything. She imagined he’d be propped somewhere – not the boy who’d picked daisies on the lawn, who’d chattered funny nonsense and pushed his head under her arm and called her Dodo, but the new, half-darkened boy who they would all have to get used to. Maybe he would call her Dodo again.