He welcomed them warmly, dropping his arms around their shoulders for a brief instant as he murmured, ‘I’m glad you both came. I haven’t thought of a way to thank you both properly yet, but I will.’

Helen felt the brief pressure of his hands on her shoulder. He glanced down at her outfit and murmured, ‘You look as pretty as you did on New Year’s Eve.’

She stared up at him, suddenly wondering, but then he said, ‘Doesn’t she, Darcy?’ The blush that had started to rise in her cheeks drained away again.

‘She always looks lovely,’ Darcy said loyally.

‘Of course. Champagne’s through there,’ Tom told them. He moved away to kiss a well-known woman television don on both cheeks.

Darcy and Helen wandered through the house, glasses of champagne in their hands. It was obviously rented, but aimed at the visiting-professor level rather than student digs. There were small Victorian button-backed sofas upholstered in velvet, thick pale-coloured carpets and glass-topped tables. It amused Helen to see the few items that emphatically belonged to Tom in this setting of carefully neutral good taste. There was a set of African ivory chessmen, and overflowing shelves of books, most of them to do with the theatre. On one low set of shelves there was a rounded, primitive soapstone carving of a polar bear.

But it was Tom’s pictures that interested Helen most of all. Every wall, from the hallway right through the house, was lined with them. There were prints and lithographs by modern artists, some of them famous names and some of them that meant nothing to her. Between these were delicate watercolour scenes and landscapes and sombre portraits in oils, all together in an intriguing, concerted demand for attention. They made the expensively soulless little house immediately Tom’s own. Helen smiled at the idea of the organisation needed to get them all crated up and shipped to Oxford. Tom was nothing if not efficient. Even his party reflected that, with the discreetly watchful waiters who kept every glass filled and attended to the exotic food laid out in the dining room.

In pride of place over the fireplace there was a little oil painting. It was of an open window, framed with blue wooden shutters, with a vase of bright flowers on the sill. Beyond the window was the sea, bright turquoise and dancing with reflected light. It was a simple, economical picture, with every brushstroke visible. Helen stood in front of it for a long moment, thinking how beautiful it was.