There was a moment’s silence. Helen felt uncomfortably that she was transparent, and that Tom could see right into her, more clearly than she could see herself.

‘Helen, are you happy?’ he asked.

She knew, however vehemently she insisted that she was, Tom would see that it was a lie. She looked back at him, protecting herself but infinitely vulnerable to him.

‘I’m very happy.’ The words came out sounding thin and defiant. Disappointment in her showed clearly in his face. Helen found herself half wanting to escape from him, and half longing to run to him and tell him no.

The chance was gone.

Tom stood up, and then held out a square package neatly wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. When he spoke again his voice was flippant.

‘Congratulations. We can call this an engagement present.’

He managed to make the idea of an engagement sound like an amusing anachronism. Some of the old irritation that he always stirred in her revived Helen, but she took the brown parcel without comment and turned it in her hands.

‘Go on,’ he ordered.

Helen pulled at the string, then folded back the paper. The first thing she saw was a hammer, and then a twist of tissue paper that revealed a slim nail and a hook. Frowning now she tore away more paper, and then found herself staring into the turquoise brilliance of the sea behind a vase of summer flowers. It was the little oil painting that she had seen in pride of place over Tom’s fireplace.

Helen held it up and marvelled again at how the economical brushstrokes, there for all to see, could conjure up so much dancing light.

Then she turned to Tom. The downward turn had come back to his mouth, and he was watching her sombrely.

‘I can’t take this,’ she said. ‘You can’t part with anything so beautiful.’

Tom’s hand closed over hers so that it tightened on the frame of the picture. ‘It’s yours now,’ he told her. ‘I wanted to give you something … and Darcy … for everything you did to help the play, and Oliver. I saw you at the party, looking up at my picture, and I knew that you’d love it as much as I do. And what better occasion could there be for a present than your engagement? To Darcy himself. What could be neater?’ Again there was the flash of mockery. ‘So let’s hang it and see how it looks.’

Tom went over to the mantelpiece of the little iron grate and deftly swept it clear of the student clutter of lecture lists and invitations to long-past faculty sherry parties. He held the picture up against the chimney breast, cocked his head to one side to judge it, then put it down to hammer in the picture pin.

They stood back shoulder to shoulder to examine it.