Before she turned away Darcy reached out and brushed her cheek with his fingers. ‘Goodnight, Helen. Can I come again?’

She nodded in the darkness. Just in that instant, in the tilt of his head and the timbre of his voice, she had caught a flicker of Oliver.

‘Flash restaurant?’

‘Absolutely not.’

No, he wasn’t Oliver at all. He mustn’t be.

Darcy watched to see her safe inside the house and then walked away, whistling softly, towards his muddy, battered little car.

Helen ran up the stairs. Confronting her in the narrow space of the gallery was a little knot of people at the door of Chloe’s room. Tom was there, and her gaze went straight to him. Forgetting herself in the sudden pleasure of seeing him, she smiled a question at him. Then his sombre face and the stillness of the group struck her. She looked over Tom’s shoulder into Chloe’s room. Oliver was innocently asleep on Chloe’s bed. Her exotically patterned oriental bedcover was rucked up around him.

Looking from Chloe to Stephen, Helen saw that Chloe looked anxious, almost imploring, and that Stephen was impatient.

‘He asked me for a proper drink, came down and had a couple of brandies, and then just fell asleep,’ Chloe said. ‘Now he seems dead to the world.’

Pansy had been apparently intent on making intricate pleats in the sleeve of her sweatshirt, but she lifted her silver-gilt head now and said coolly, ‘Passed out, more like.’ Her eyes fixed on Stephen and she shrugged, making a little, pretty, regretful face. ‘Shame,’ she whispered.

Stephen moved forward an inch, then collected himself. With an effort he looked at his watch.

‘Thank you for supper, Pansy. I can probably find you an hour if you really think you need some Shakespeare background. There’s a new feminist book on his heroines that might be useful for your role.’ But his little speech didn’t sound quite right. For once Stephen wasn’t entirely the confident don. He was tentative, not quite certain of his ground, and the whisper of diffidence suited him. He seemed younger, vulnerable.

Chloe’s eyes glittered as she watched him.

‘Goodnight, Chloe, love,’ he said, more smoothly, but Tom’s hand caught his arm.

‘You might help me get him back to the House,’ Tom said sharply.

‘If I must,’ Stephen responded.

The curious little scene had held them all so intent that only Helen had noticed that Oliver was awake. He smoothed the dazed expression from his face with one hand and then stood up.

‘Kind of you both, but not necessary. And I don’t care for being talked about as if I’m incapable.’

He was prickly with anger.

‘Why act like it then, darling?’ Pansy’s voice was languid. Oliver took her arm and tried to turn her away towards her room but she shook him off.

‘Perhaps you’d be better in your own little bed tonight.’