Camilla had left the awful scene in the bedroom and rushed out of the house. Behind her she heard her father calling her name. As she slammed the front door, the desperate, rasping sounds of his pain and regret entered her brain like bullets, ripping apart all the trust she had invested in him since her earliest memories. She flagged down a taxi, but when she was safely inside she had no idea where she wanted to go. In the anonymity of the cab she began to weep uncontrollably.

‘Now don’t go breaking your ’eart, a pretty girl like you. I bet it’s over a man, eh? Well, he ain’t worth it. They never are, my love. That’s what I say, and you’ll soon see that I’m right.’ The cabbie regarded her with sympathy in his driving mirror. ‘Where shall we go then, miss? You want me to take you on a tour of the town, or ’ave you got somewhere special you’d like to wind up?’

Camilla searched for a handkerchief. Unable to make a decision, she gave the address of her flat. There was nowhere else she could go, no one she could lean on. She had never needed close friends in London, never sought out anyone in whom she might confide. In her mind she had always been apart, different from the people with whom she worked and dined and danced. She enjoyed being aloof, disconnected, unaffected by the realities of other lives. They had no power, no sway over her emotions or aspirations, no insight into her private thoughts.

‘I never have a bloody clue what you’re thinking,’ Tom had often complained to her. ‘You say things that sound reasonable and I listen, but I don’t know what’s really going on in that beautiful head. There’s no way to tell what you’re actually feeling, if you’re feeling anything at all. One of these days you’re going to find out that you’re human like the rest of us. That you have to connect, or you’ll start withering away like a plant without any water.’

‘Well, I certainly don’t need any watering from you,’ she had replied, lofty and confident, pushing him away as he tried to kiss her. She had seen him turn away, muttering about pride and falls from high places, and she had laughed at him.