‘I’ll tell you what I don’t want,’ I said, keeping my voice low. I was always conscious of my mother overhearing if she was in. ‘I don’t want to be treated like a Victorian wife, nor like a member of the regiment. If you want me to respect you then you’re going to have to stop being so mistrustful and childish about it. I’m not your mother, so there’s no need to behave like your father. I’m going to visit Olivia tomorrow. If you’re not happy about that, then I’m sorry, but she’s my friend and she needs me.’

Douglas’s face had gone tight with fury. ‘Everybody needs you, don’t they?’ he sneered. ‘You’ll run round after anyone except me.’

He slammed out of the room. Feeling immediately sorry, I ran down after him to the front door, but he was already off down the street, lighting a cigarette. I saw him bend his pale head to the lighted match, watched his painful gait, his jerking angry manner, and thought how much he felt like a stranger to me.

In the railway station, among the unpredictable, jolting movements of the crowds, I felt already that I wanted to protect my unborn child. To warn off anyone who moved too quickly or advanced too close, shielding my stomach fiercely with one hand. It was a feeling I knew Lisa would understand and I longed suddenly to tell her about the baby.

On the journey, rattling through the freshly ploughed Warwickshire fields, I sat sucking peppermints, wondering in what state I should find Olivia. I had observed no change in her during the summer. She remained withdrawn, frozen, and I seldom got her to speak about anything other than the immediate facts of her state or occasionally an event on the ward. I realized suddenly that Olivia and I had never discussed having children or how we might feel about them, and thinking back on that, it seemed a strange lack. I wondered what sort of parents Douglas and I would make. Surely he would see this child as a sign of my commitment to him, make him more able to trust? But I was already beginning to see how quickly communication could break down between us. I had to admit to myself that I was becoming miserable in my marriage.

Olivia was brought in to see me not by the bacon-cheeked nurse this time, but a younger, less buxom woman with a gentle air and a very straight brown fringe between her eyes and her starched white cap. She seemed apologetic and didn’t impose a time limit on us, sitting herself quietly by the door as if trying to pretend she wasn’t there.

There was something different about Olivia, a slowness, as if to move at all was unbearable for her. Most striking of all was the fact that her hair was now short, lopped in a rough pageboy level with her earlobes.

I loathed asking her how she was. It seemed such an obviously foolish question, almost an insult. Instead I said, ‘I like your hair.’ In fact, had it been more expertly cut and more often washed, it would have suited her delicate features very well. ‘Did you ask them to do it?’