Helen’s self-imposed solitude meant one other thing too. She was denying herself the chance of seeing Tom, and she was unnerved to realise how much she wanted to. She felt that her liking for him had deepened and was still changing, in a way that she didn’t quite want to account for. She told herself that her reluctance to confront her feelings sprang from shame at her own silliness on New Year’s Eve, and it would all be all right again when she had told him she was sorry. But she held back from going boldly to find him. When they met again, she wanted it to be by accident. Perhaps then she could apologise light-heartedly and their differences would be forgotten.

So Helen went on trying to spot his decisive stride in the ambling crowds of students, and telling herself that she simply missed the stimulating crackle of his company.

Then, one evening, she heard him. The timbre of his voice was unmistakable. It was one night not long after Pansy’s party, and he was in Pansy’s room again. Helen lifted her head instinctively and cocked it to the sound. In the breathless moment that followed she heard him sounding impatient and exasperated. Then Pansy answered him, her voice raised too, and tinged with petulance.

Don’t listen. Helen sprang out of her chair, galvanised by her desire not to hear any more. Whatever Tom wanted from Pansy tonight, whatever – even – he still felt for her, Helen didn’t want to know about it. None of my business, she tried to tell herself. I don’t care about Pansy or her pretty face or her long tentacles.

Damn it.

Helen clicked off her reading light and went downstairs to Rose and Gerry, rather than stay in her own room and be forced to eavesdrop. Down in the kitchen she half listened to Rose’s talk and remembered the books on her desk with a longing to immerse herself in them again. At least work kept the more uncomfortable realities at bay. I’ll stay in Oxford for ever, Helen thought. I’ll turn into an old maid and my biggest excitement will be the discovery of a forgotten footnote somewhere. I’ll have a smooth, unlined face and literature will be my life. What could be safer than that? Yet the prospect was less inviting than it had been a year ago. Made irritable with herself, Helen went back upstairs.

She had barely reached her room before she heard Pansy’s door slam and then the front door. Relief mingled with disappointment gripped her. Whatever Tom had wanted, it wasn’t going to keep him with Pansy all night. The house was comfortably silent again, but it was also very empty.

Helen told herself that she was sorry to have missed another chance of telling him how much she wished that New Year’s Eve had happened differently.