The men were still standing by the table. They were looking up an identification feature in a field guide. Molly was aware of a movement outside the open door. Elizabeth was standing there. She was, to Molly, still a girl. She looked almost Mediterranean in colouring and features. Her hair was thick and very curly. She made no attempt to hide, but she was standing quite still. She must have heard what John had said. She caught Molly’s eye. Molly smiled, was about to speak, when Elizabeth turned quickly and walked away. Her face had been impassive, but it seemed to Molly that she had been pleased by what she had heard.

After lunch Elizabeth found herself talking to Molly in the kitchen. She was not sure, exactly, how it came about. The older woman did not ask questions, hardly spoke at all. With her shabby, ill-fitting clothes, her round spectacles held together with sticky tape, she looked like a grownup, rather jolly schoolboy. She listened intently, occasionally offered an opinion which was different from Elizabeth’s, but there was no element of judgement in her comments. Her opinion was different, not right or better.

She never talked about Frank. She would never have discussed him with John, and there was no one else here with whom she had any intimate conversation. Except perhaps Mark, but somehow he did not count. Yet now she was explaining about Frank. She supposed that George’s wife had said something which reminded her of Frank, and which had prompted the discussion, but she could not remember exactly how the conversation had started.

“It seemed so exciting when we first met,” she said. “ I was a mousy little student at teacher’s training college, and he was a lecturer. He wasn’t a lecturer for very long. It wasn’t his scene at all. He hated having to face all the students.”

It was hard to believe Elizabeth was ever mousy, but she continued:

“He was working in the BBC by the time we were married. We had to move to Bristol, so I never had the opportunity to finish my course. I didn’t mind. Not at the time. Frank came from Northern Ireland, and had a very conventional idea of what he wanted a wife to be. He didn’t mean to be unkind. My dad was a real waster. He moved from job to job, drank too much. Then there weren’t any more jobs to get. So the security of a nice house, and money in the bank, and a husband who came home every night, was a real treat. But I started to get so bored.”

She stressed the last word dramatically, and stretched to emphasize the yawning tedium of married life.

“He was doing very well at the BBC and for a while that was fun. But he didn’t really want me to be involved. He was a very strong character, very organized, a bit rigid. Then I got pregnant. Frank started taking a bit of notice of me then. He was thrilled to bits. He wanted a daughter, to be a doll and to love him. He would have hated it really if there had been a baby. He would have hated the mess, the disruption to his routine. But I had a miscarriage. He was very kind. He said that he was sure that next time everything would be all right, but I knew that I’d never have his baby. I didn’t leave him then. I didn’t have the energy somehow. He went to Bardsey to do some filming and I persuaded him to take me with him. He wouldn’t have taken me usually, but he was still feeling sorry for me.”