‘Yes. The exams went fine.’

Couldn’t he hear the catch in her voice?

‘Will you mind very much if I don’t come today?’ Darcy was busy with his own anxiety. She pictured him in his office at Mere, frowning and staring out at the grey woolly masses of the sheep moving on the slope across the valley.

‘No, I won’t mind.’

‘Until tomorrow, then. Eight o’clock. We’ll go to dinner before the Ball. There’s a surprise.’ And Darcy rang off, chuckling.

‘Will the sheep be all right?’ she asked, too late, into the dead receiver. Dinner. She would tell him then, Helen thought. Over dinner, alone together. There would be no need to go through the travesty of partnering him to the Ball with this weight dragging at her.

Slowly Helen climbed the stairs to her room, thinking about the year and the changes and the mistakes. Follies, she said aloud, and smiled wistfully. But she had come to Tom at last, and that was all she wanted.

Helen’s room looked dusty and unlived in. She blinked at the piles of books and the notes drifting over her desk. The intense preoccupation of the long week had been obliterated by the happy poignancy of this afternoon. Tom’s arms around her and his face against hers were realer than all the three years that lay behind. She could only remember it dimly now, as an irrelevance. The books under her hand might have been in some unknown foreign language.

Helen went across and leaned her head against the window. The view engrossed her as it always did. Magdalen, All Souls’, St Mary’s, Tom Tower, she said, counting off the towers and spires as her eyes travelled over them. Oxford peaceful and impregnable under the evening sun. Tomorrow was the last day of her last term. After tomorrow she wouldn’t belong here any longer.

And where would she belong?

Helen realised with startling suddenness that she had no idea. Dimly in the past weeks, and with reluctance, she had thought of Mere and a life watching the fields and the slow roll of the seasons. There wouldn’t be that, any more. It was as if a sudden stiff breeze, sharp with the salt tang of the sea, had swept through the stuffy room. She felt free, drunk with freedom. Tom had asked nothing of her, and had promised her nothing in return. She could do anything now, but she knew too that if she chose to she could share her freedom with Tom.