We went on. We ate dessert. They talked about Fred Williams and Fred Cress and Donald Friend. Mr Parish put on his glasses and got some slides from his library and he and Jo held them up to the overhead light. He returned to the library and came back with a book of prints. Each print was protected with waxy tissue paper. They drew back the tissue-paper and inspected the originals.

‘How are you progressing?’ June asked me, quietly, in a little air pocket in the room protected from the attentions of men. ‘With your book? Are you making headway?’

I told her, very briefly. She sighed a little and nodded as if she knew all about it. ‘It’s very difficult, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘But you must go on, you know. You really must.’ She gripped my hand in her own, surprisingly firm hand and said: ‘You would never forgive yourself if you stopped.’

‘What are you talking about, you women?’ Mr Parish now said. Or something along those lines. He had gone all bird-eyed, like he had spotted a lush little worm below. Two lush little worms. ‘Are you discussing us and our latest transgressions?’

‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘We were discussing ourselves.’

‘Well, there’s a minefield!’ he said. And laughed. ‘Or a desert.’

June had got up, was collecting bowls again.

‘A minefield, definitely!’ said Jo. He winked at me. It was an ill-timed wink. And, continuing his ill-timing, he went on to say: ‘So what do you think of my wife, James? She’s going to become a published poet. What do you say to that?’

‘I congratulate her,’ said James. ‘It’s no easy thing.’ He leaned over to raise a belated toast. His eyes connected with mine and I wish they hadn’t because I saw in them a sort of amusement that made me feel instantly stupid and violent.

‘Did you manage to read them, James?’ I said. I knew he had a copy. Jo had given him one, ages ago.

‘Of course I’ve read them, Veda,’ he said. ‘I read them a long time ago, when you first left me that package …’

I blushed at the memory of that, Tilde—that ambitious, ludicrous batch of poems I’d left with him years ago.

‘No, I mean the latest. Jo gave you a copy of my manuscript. Oh, months ago …’

‘I’m not sure what you’re talking about,’ he said. ‘Jo has not given me any manuscript.’

I raised my head at this and looked across the table, and I could see, from Jo’s pleading red face, that this was indeed the truth. (He had promised me, Tilde! Why hadn’t he followed through?)