Surprisingly, in the dusty remoteness of the billiard room, the rest of the evening was forgotten. She felt quite calm, and perfectly happy.

‘My name’s Darcy,’ he told her.

‘Helen.’ They shook hands on it, formally, but still smiling at each other.

‘Who were you running away from?’

Helen reflected for a moment. ‘Myself, mostly.’ To deflect him, she asked, ‘Are you hiding in here?’

‘Not exactly. I don’t like parties, that’s all. I suppose you don’t play billiards, do you?’

Helen winced as she remembered the night before.

‘No.’

‘Shall I show you?’

‘No. I might tear the cloth.’

Darcy frowned, then said vaguely, ‘Oh, I shouldn’t worry about that.’ At once another idea occurred to him. ‘Look, now we know each other, would you like to dance?’

Helen peered around, bewildered. ‘Here?’

‘Well, no. I meant in the ballroom. We needn’t talk to anyone else.’

Helen was laughing again, surprised by the agreeable bizarreness of their encounter. After a moment of looking puzzled, Darcy laughed with her.

Then they left the billiard room and slipped through the crowded rooms to the ballroom. The party was at its height and the floor was packed with dancers. In an inconspicuous corner Darcy held out his arms and Helen came into them. She saw that his face was serious, concentrating as he danced. He did it well enough, but with none of the instinctive fluidity that she had glimpsed in Oliver at the beginning of the evening. But their movements suited each other and Helen let the music carry her, closing her eyes on the crowded room. They drifted unthinkingly from dance to dance. Sometimes, with his cheek against her hair, Darcy would say something inconsequential about the band or the dancers around them. Helen would answer equally inconsequentially and then they settled back into comfortable silence again.

She was amazed when, with a final flourish, the band stopped playing. There was a patter of applause and Helen looked around her. The floor was almost empty and the musicians were putting their instruments away. She turned Darcy’s wrist to look at his watch. There were fine bleached hairs on the back of his hand, she noticed, and darker ones at his wrist.

‘Ten to three.’ She became aware of his hand in hers and dropped it at once.

‘I enjoyed that,’ he said seriously.

‘Me too.’ Helen stretched a little and realised at once that she was exhausted. Then she remembered Oliver, and Tom. ‘I should go to bed now,’ she said sadly.

‘May I see you home?’

‘Thank you, but I’m staying in the house.’

Darcy looked mildly surprised. Then he said, ‘In that case, I’ll walk you to the stairs.’

At the foot of the great sweeping curve, he paused and looked upwards for a second.

‘Goodnight,’ he said softly. ‘Thank you. You made an impossible evening enjoyable.’