Tom grinned. ‘Oh, I don’t know. Real life has a way of working itself out, perhaps not quite as pat but just as satisfactorily. Anyway, who says anything about happy ever after? Not Shakespeare. Remember “Men are April when they woo, December when they wed”?’ He was shrugging into his canary yellow jacket, smiling. ‘You’re too romantic, Chloe dear. Very dangerous.’

Easy to say that, she thought bitterly.

Tom was strolling away, whistling. As an afterthought he turned and asked casually, ‘Where’s Helen?’

Helen’s occasional visits to rehearsals had completely stopped.

‘I don’t think she can stand the offstage drama.’

‘How sensible.’ Tom was wry.

‘And she’s seeing quite a lot of Darcy.’

There was a perceptible pause before he spoke again. Then he said, ‘How nice.’ Tom was on his way again, still smiling faintly, to distribute acerbic notes to each of his actors.

The time before the opening of Tom’s As You like It was a happy one for Helen.

Spring came early that year. The crocuses along the river bank were rapidly followed by sheets of daffodils, and then by faint dustings of green on the trailing willow branches. Along the river the air often smelt of fresh paint as the long, flat punts were brought out and cleaned up for the start of the summer season.

Oxford was very beautiful in this early spring light. The pale sunshine penetrated into Follies House, putting a tinge of warmth into the red brick and throwing fantastic shadows from the carved banisters on to the dusty oak boards of the gallery. Helen felt the sense of truce in the house and it comforted her. She walked to and from the libraries or her tutorials with a calm she had imagined that she had lost for ever. Her work was going well, and the days had something of the old, orderly quality of life before the savage upheavals of the last year.

Anxious to preserve her tranquillity, she stayed away from play rehearsals. If she didn’t see Oliver she could hope that he was happier, and she could believe that the pain of losing him was fading at last. She had no desire either to witness any more of the feud between Chloe and Pansy.