‘I don’t think so, darling. I’m a little tired and I think the doctor’s appointment will be enough of an outing for me. But you might like to come here for supper. It looks like you’ve covered enough nightclubs for one week. My friends the Willoughbys saw you in Annabel’s on Tuesday. You can’t stay up all night every night, Camilla. I thought Edward told you to stay away from all that. The smoke alone takes its toll on your face.’

‘My face is fine. Apart from the fact that I’ve got a bright red line gouged across my forehead. I’ll see you for dinner.’

Camilla hung up. George was obviously away somewhere. Marina never had them at home together. It was an arrangement that rankled all round, and caused a festering anxiety in Camilla. On occasion her mother had cried, used her illness as a bargaining tool, begged her to reconsider. But each time Camilla thought of George she saw him again in her mind’s eye, bending down towards the erect young man on the bed. Then she wanted to spew out the fury she felt, so that the hideous image would never return. She had tried to rationalise her distress, but each time she considered the mix of betrayal, adultery and the added ingredient of her father’s homosexuality she buried the idea in the deepest recess of her consciousness. She didn’t feel revulsion, or even distaste, for other men who preferred lovers of their own sex, and she had considered herself modern enough in her thinking, to avoid judgment on such arrangements. But she still could not think of her own father in this way. Nor could she bring herself to face him. When Marina wept and pleaded, Camilla turned away, lost in a well of sadness and confusion.

‘We must try to talk this through,’ Marina had begged. ‘Why can’t we discuss the whole issue and try to put it to rest? I don’t know where or how you first heard about this, and I wish that I’d somehow been able to explain it to you myself. But perhaps I can help you to find a way through it all.’

Camilla shook her head, incapable of telling her mother what she had seen, the graphic awfulness of her discovery, and she did not believe Marina had ever found a way through it all herself. So she said nothing until the subject faded into the background once more, and their relationship returned to calmer waters.