‘What are you doing here?’ she asked foolishly.

‘Waiting.’

As he said it, Tom’s mask slipped. He looked at Helen’s candid grey eyes and the mass of black curls that she had tied severely back from her cheeks. It made her look fragile, and touchingly determined. Tom put his hand out clumsily to reach her and he thought he saw answering hunger leap into her face. They moved together like robots in the empty space that they had created in the crowded room. Her hand came up to his, but she was fending him off instead of pulling him towards her.

‘Don’t. I don’t want you to wait for anything, do you hear?’

That was so like her, so much the paradox of reserved English Helen denying the sensuality inside her like fire within marble, that he almost laughed out loud. Then anger at her wilful stubbornness possessed him. They both snapped upright, almost spitting at each other.

‘Ostrich,’ he taunted her.

‘Leave … me … alone.’ Helen bit off each word, her voice as sharp as a knife.

Then she turned and walked away from him. Her shoulders were square and her back absolutely straight. Even Tom couldn’t have guessed at the effort it cost her just to keep on walking.

Three days, two days.

There was no more work to do. Helen knew that she should be resting now, hoarding her energy for the physical effort of writing exams six hours a day for the next five days. Five short days, the culmination of three years’ work. Numbly she sat with Chloe in her room, staring out at the golden front of Christ Church over endless cups of coffee, trying not to think.

Chloe was taut with anticipation too, but she hid it even from Helen. It was Chloe’s way to joke about the unimportance of Mods, her first-year exams, admitting to no-one but herself her surprising, fierce desire to acquit herself well.

On the second to last day, Darcy came to wish Helen luck. They had already agreed that she would stay alone through the week of exams, keeping her concentration finely honed. Helen knew that that wasn’t the only reason, but she swallowed the guilt. She was becoming quite the expert at not facing things, she told herself wryly.

When the time came for Darcy to leave, he stood uncomfortably at the door. Helen knew that he had something difficult to say and waited, knowing that his directness would force him to bring whatever it was out complete, without prompting.

‘Helen. I want to announce our engagement.’

From his pocket he produced a carefully folded piece of paper and showed it to her.

‘In The Times and the Telegraph and so forth. This is the proper form of words. If you don’t have any objection to the convention, of course.’