Chloe balanced her glass precariously on the cushion beside her head and laced her fingers across her chest with a contented sigh.

‘Mmm. I think drinking champagne in the sun is my favourite kind of morning. It only narrowly pips attending a lecture on devotional poetry of the Middle Ages, of course.’

‘A close-run thing,’ Helen agreed.

‘And are you happy, Helen Brown?’

Helen squinted at the dust particles spinning in a shaft of light.

‘Blissfully,’ she said lightly. ‘Oh yes, ecstatically. Why not?’

Chloe rolled sideways to look at her.

‘Oliver all forgotten, then?’

‘No, not forgotten. Just … gone.’

‘Vanished into orbit round the star. And now you’ve got Darcy.’

‘Yes,’ Helen said a little shortly. ‘I have got Darcy. Tell me about Stephen.’ For weeks she had avoided asking. Now, in this moment of cheerful intimacy, she wanted to know.

Chloe rolled back and groaned into her cushion. ‘I wish I knew. Heaven and hell. He doesn’t act married, but it’s there, like a plate-glass wall. I can come this close to him,’ and Chloe put her hands together, a perfect match but not quite touching, ‘but never any closer. It gives me no pleasure to think of wrecking anybody’s life, Helen, but I’d give anything for him to be mine. All of him. No more hole-and-corner afternoons, stolen weekends, furtive phone calls.’ With sudden violence she said, ‘I’m tired. I want it to be simple and clear, like the way I feel for him. I love him, and I’m scared. I know you think I’m morally wrong. D’you think I’m a fool as well?’

Helen turned her empty glass against the light. ‘I don’t think either of those things. I do think he won’t make you happy,’ she said very quietly.

‘Oh, but he does.’ Chloe’s voice was full of tenderness. ‘Just by existing he does. And so long as he is here, I shall be here for him.’

The room was silent. Helen was remembering Stephen running up the steps to Pansy’s dressing room last night, and Beatrice trailing wearily after him. There was nothing more that she could say.

Chloe jumped up and reached for the jug. With a flourish she dribbled the last few drops of Buck’s Fizz into their glasses.

‘Let’s think,’ she said cheerfully. ‘What shall we drink to? Not happiness, perhaps. I know …’ she stood upright, smiling, with the sun bleaching out the anxious lines around her eyes. She looked lean and tawny like a jungle cat. ‘To satisfaction.’

Helen raised her glass too. Yes, she could drink to that. ‘To satisfaction,’ she echoed hopefully.