‘I told you,’ she said, trying not to make it sound too harsh, ‘not to think about him any more like that. Don’t hurt yourself.’

‘I know.’

After a moment’s silence Chloe said, ‘So you won’t go?’

Helen looked out at the hoardings and street lights of the city’s outskirts.

‘Oh yes,’ she said, almost to herself. ‘I’ve got to go. I can’t stop myself. But I’ll be okay. I think I understood something this afternoon. But for now, just to be near him is better than nothing. Can you understand that?’

Chloe’s thoughts sped back over the afternoon. ‘No,’ she said softly, ‘I don’t think I can. I couldn’t bear to stand meekly by and watch the man I wanted being possessed by someone else. But if you want to go, then go. Don’t let anything stand in your way. You must do what you want in life, Helen. You yourself. Believe me, it’s important.’

Helen was startled and faintly alarmed by the vehemence in Chloe’s voice. She could find no satisfactory answer.

Silence separated them once again as the walls and towers of the city closed around them.

CHRISTMAS

SIX

Christmas that year was the saddest that Helen had ever spent. As always she and Graham decorated the tree on Christmas Eve, and then arranged the family presents beneath it. When they stood back to admire the effect, Helen saw too clearly that there were only three little piles. She slipped away to her room, but not before Graham had seen the tears in her eyes. That saddened her too, because she had been determined to stay cheerful. But there was a hollowness about the Christmas rituals that was impossible to varnish over. Too often the three of them found themselves sitting in silence, staring at the incongruously festive food and drink. At Christmas dinner only Graham wore the paper hat from his cracker and afterwards, instead of playing the word games which their father had enjoyed, they sat subdued in front of the mock-jollity of the television.

Helen had repeatedly put off the real decision about whether or not to go to Montcalm. She had thought that she could always invent an excuse at the last minute. But as the flat days after Christmas trickled by, she found herself thinking of it more often as an escape from the sad claustrophobia of home. Helen watched her mother carefully, and thought that she was beginning to recover. She was preparing eagerly for her new job, and some of the lines of tension had vanished from her face. Graham, more resilient, was busy with his own friends. But for Helen herself the house was too full of memories of her father, and it was empty now of anything of her own life.