When she found Pansy, Helen was with her. Evidently they had been talking about her. Helen was visibly unhappy, but Pansy looked businesslike.

‘Well,’ Chloe said flatly. ‘So much for that. What’s the telephone number, then?’

A tiny silence enveloped the three women. Then Helen and Pansy were at her side. Chloe stiffened, then realised how grateful she felt for their arms around her.

‘What did he say?’ Pansy asked.

‘Nothing. He couldn’t have, because I didn’t tell him.’ Chloe made her voice artificially light, and Helen and Pansy exchanged a glance. ‘When I got there, it seemed a little inappropriate. I don’t even know what I was expecting. Hardly a wave of paternal delight and the family ring.’

Pansy hugged her fiercely. ‘Oliver can’t even cope with himself. He’s not the person to turn to if you need support, or even a clear insight into anything.’

‘No. But he has done something for me. He’s made me want to face up to this, and to do it alone. So I’ll have your doctor’s telephone number, Pansy, please.’

Pansy wrote the number down for her on a scrap of paper and Chloe crumpled it into her fist without looking at it.

‘Thanks.’

Helen spoke for the first time, and her voice was hesitant.

‘Would you like one of us to come with you?’

Chloe was certain. ‘No. I’ll go on my own.’ But suddenly their support seemed vitally important, and she added, ‘You do understand that I’ve got to do this? That there isn’t any other way?’

Helen’s face flooded with sympathy. ‘Chloe, only you can know what to do. But if it was me, I’d do the same.’

She said nothing of her anxiety for Oliver, or her growing fear that he was creating an impenetrable mess around himself. But she felt it, as keenly as she felt for Chloe.

Pansy’s mouth was hard for a moment. ‘Yes. It’s not … very easy, afterwards. Helen and I will stick around here to look after you.’

Chloe looked from one to the other, and they smiled at her.

The address which the neutral-voiced receptionist had given her was off Harley Street. Chloe sat in the waiting room and looked around her. It might have been a room-set for a smart design magazine with its black Venetian blinds half closed against the London drizzle, glass and steel tables and black Italian leather sofa. There was not a hint of a white coat or a drawer-file, and the air was heavy with the scent of freesias. Chloe felt sick and cold, and forever afterwards associated the smell with the same sensations. The wait was mercifully short.

Pansy’s doctor was middle-aged, prosperous and weary-looking. He never once looked into Chloe’s eyes.

The examination was very brief and his matter-of-fact questions took scarcely any longer.

‘And you want a termination?’