‘Are you all right?’ Chloe’s voice was anxious at her side. ‘You look ill.’

‘Yes.’ Helen fought to collect herself. No-one must know, not even Chloe. ‘Yes. I’m okay. Just cold, that’s all. There are too many people here. Let’s walk a little way to warm up.’

They followed the press of people up the High, and were swept on into Broad Street. There, in front of the Bodleian, Helen glimpsed him again, standing poised under one of the stone emperors. They were separated by a gaggle of morris dancers. One of them capered in and out of the dance with a pig’s bladder on a stick. Tom was watching, frowning, with his hands deep in his pockets. This time Helen gave herself no chance to think. She started to run to him, blind to the intricate dance that she would have to cut through, but it was too late.

Much closer, two girls in extravagant twenties costumes and heavily rouged cheeks had seen him too. They pounced on him with cries of greeting, and took his arms insistently in theirs. After only an instant’s hesitation, Tom kissed the rouged cheeks and turned on his laconic smile. The girls were pointing, pulling him away, and he let himself be drawn along with them to join their party.

He hadn’t seen Helen. She stopped short and then turned blindly back.

‘Wasn’t that Tom?’ Chloe asked.

‘Was it?’ Helen responded tonelessly. ‘I didn’t see.’

Chloe looked sideways at her friend and then suggested, ‘Let’s walk through the Parks. It’s too beautiful to go inside yet.’

The grey-white sky had turned eggshell blue, and the wind had dropped. There was a promise of warmth in the still air. Chloe and Helen passed the red and yellow brick slab of Keble Chapel and turned into the University Parks. The trees were still heavy with blossom but the grass underneath was starred with white petals. Helen walked slowly, concentrating on the scent of blossom and mown grass and on the exuberant song of a blackbird.

‘Are you sure you don’t want to sit down for a while?’ Chloe said at length. ‘You look a bit better, but you went so white back there, I thought you were going to faint.’

Helen shook her head. ‘No, let’s walk on. I just want to get away from … all those crowds.’

The steadiness of her own voice surprised her. She felt that within herself she was running headlong, trying to escape the panicky conviction that she was wrong, all over again. Wronger this time than she could have believed possible.

What do I want?, she kept asking herself, and getting back only the numbing answer that it was too late to allow herself any kind of choice.