When your grandparents had left, I went out and walked around the city. It was the beginning offune and I was free for the first time. Or that’s how it felt anyway. I wasn’t beginning my Ph.D. until September. I just walked and walked, went into shops and looked at clothes, watched other women walking around, sat drinking epresso in the coffee bars. And on Saturday afternoon, when I knew what I wanted to buy, I went to Dingle’s and bought a black pencil skirt, a black polo-neck jersey, black stilettos, black stockings, a scarlet scarf, some big gold earrings and my first make-up. I went to a hairdresser and had my hair bobbed and feathered. And then I went back to Prothey’s with all my bags.

The reason I did all this was because that Saturday night it was the graduation ball. So I’d done my research (I was a good student, even about having fun) and worked out what all the really glamorous women were wearing. And that was what I bought myself. When I got back to Prothey’s I had a bath and put on my make-up. I had to follow the instructions in a magazine — Td never done it before, which seems funny now. Anyway, then I put on the clothes and sneaked into Prothey’s room to look in the long mirror that she had in her wardrobe. I wish you’d been there. I looked in the mirror and my jaw dropped. I looked gorgeous. I remember standing alone in Prothey’s room and laughing

I know that you’ll be sitting somewhere reading this and thinking I don’t want to know about what clothes Mum wore when she was young — I want to know about my father. The point is, I went to the ball looking like a dream, and the moment I arrived I had men all over me like a rash. There was one unfortunate-looking man who wouldn’t leave me alone, kept bothering me for a dance, to buy me a drink, to take me out for a meal. He grabbed me as I stood by the bar even though I tried to stop him. And then, suddenly, there was your father. He took the man’s arm and pulled him away, saying ⁽She’s with me.’

Can you imagine anything as corny as that? ‘She’s with me.’

I’d never seen him before but the minute I looked at his handsome face I began to have fun. We did have fun, John, your father and I. Remember that as you read the rest of this letter. We went to bars and cafés, went to other people’s houses for meals, went to all the jazz sessions in the Old Duke and the Green Room. Your father sometimes borrowed a friend’s car and we would drive out into the country and go for walks, go to country pubs. We had a lot of fun that summer and then your father asked me to marry him and I said yes.