‘Les smoked. She hadn’t told me that, either, but I didn’t mind. I thought we could be friends. I said to her once: “It’s a bit of a giggle, isn’t it? Girls together.” She put on this solemn voice. “We’re not girls together, Hilda. We’re women together.” Honestly!’ She paused, and picked up a stitch. ‘She said she was through with men, they were never any good, she always picked the wrong ones.’

‘Did she?’ I asked.

‘It was fine at first.’ She lowered her voice. ‘In the, you know, the bedroom department. But then they thought they owned her, she said. ‘They dominated her.’

I stared. ‘They dominated her?’

‘She said they just wanted her for her body.’

There was a silence. I hadn’t. If anything, it was vice versa. She went on. ‘She said they didn’t want to know the Lesley in her.’

I thought: did she want to know the Desmond in me? I didn’t speak.

Hilda went on: ‘She’d had a rough time, she said. She’d fallen for this Barry chap, but he was everything she despised. She said it was like a disease.’

‘Did you know about Oliver Reed?’ I asked.

‘What?’

‘She fancied Oliver Reed.’

She shook her head. ‘Didn’t know that. She said she could only fancy men who she had nothing in common with. She called it something hoity-toity. I remember, we were having our Horlicks.’

‘Called it what?’

‘It was the title of one of her books. She had tons of books.’

‘What did she call it?’

She rolled her eyes. ‘The Perversity of Sexual Desire.’

I paused. ‘I know what she means,’ I said.

‘Do you?’ She looked up.

I didn’t reply. ‘Go on,’ I said.

‘She always had a theory for everything, she was such a know-all, but look what a mess she was in.’

There was a moment’s silence. The needles clicked.

‘Where did she meet him?’ I asked.

‘Don’t know. They were in the Lake District together, I think, then Lincolnshire. Then they came to Reading.’

‘Why?’

‘She’d heard of a therapist here.’

‘A therapist?’

‘It was a woman who did trance dances.’ Hilda giggled. ‘And they used to bang pillows about and pretend they were being born.’

‘But they were born.’

‘Born again. She tried to explain to me but Crossroads was on. Anyway it didn’t work out.’

‘Why not?’

‘They all quarrelled. Then they had therapy about that. She used to come home and tell me all about it. And there I’d be, trying to make the children’s tea. She knew all about maternal bonding, as she put it, but could she bake a bakewell tart?’