‘It doesn’t help the baby.’ Chloe wept as though she could never stop.

They were black days for Chloe. She was oppressed by a sense of the selfishness of the years behind her, and the pointlessness of the years ahead. The time passed painfully slowly.

Helen and Pansy stayed with her, trying by a mixture of sympathy and determined cheerfulness to bring her back to herself. Chloe was dimly aware that Pansy could have very little time to spare for Stephen.

‘Where is he?’ she asked once, and smiled bleakly at Pansy’s anxious start. ‘Oh, don’t worry. It all seems a very long way off, now.’

‘He’s around,’ Pansy said airily. Appraisingly they looked at each other, then Pansy’s silvery-gold head turned away.

‘Pansy,’ Chloe said softly, ‘thank you for being here. You, and Helen too.’

Very slowly the clouds began to lift. Small, everyday activities began to seem significant again, and then one morning Chloe found herself looking forward to the brightness of summer. The Oxford spring was warm, and the borders in the College gardens were splashed with colour.

The surprising, painful longing for the baby that would never be faded to the point where it stopped obliterating everything else. The scar would stay with Chloe, but the immediate hurt was over.

One evening Chloe cooked a thank-you supper for Helen and Pansy. It was the last evening of full term. From tomorrow most people would disperse for the vacation, and the crowds on the city pavements would be wandering tourists.

The three women sat in the dusk, looking out at the light fading over the spires and domes.

‘I’ve got an idea,’ Pansy said. She had bitten the top off an orange and was sucking it dry with childish enjoyment. ‘Come to Venice for the Vac.’

Chloe and Helen stared at her in surprise. ‘I must have told you about Masefield’s palazzo? No? Well, naturally, he has a palazzo on the Grand Canal. I’ve got to join him and Kim there for a few days.’ She made a face as if the prospect was the gloomiest imaginable. ‘Do come. It’s just what you need, Chloe. Change of scene and all that. And a break for you before Schools, Helen. We can eat lots, and sightsee if you insist, and you can both go shopping with Kim instead of me.’

‘We-ell,’ Chloe said, tempted in spite of herself.

Helen felt a stab of envy. She could think of nowhere in the world she longed to see more than Venice, but the idea was impossible. Then, with a jolt of excitement that brought the colour rushing to her face, she remembered the remainder of her travel bursary. The money would buy her a standby ticket to Venice and back, with perhaps even a little left over. That’s what the money is for, she told herself. And she would see Venice.

‘Helen?’