After their marriage her fine new husband had taken her up to bed and, after kissing her perfunctorily, had left her. She had assumed he was being kind, thinking of her, of how it was all new and the wedding had been tiring, and at first she had actually felt a surge of happiness to have such a thoughtful husband. But as the months passed it had become a nightly ritual. Henry pecked her on the cheek and went straight to his own room or left the house altogether. She had begun to think that something was dreadfully wrong with her. How was she to get a child if he never came near her? The worst of it all was that it was not something she could discuss with anyone. Her mother would have a fit of the vapours and be taken to bed for the day with a liberal supply of brandy if Isabel so much as mentioned it to her. So she had kept it to herself, and every month the strain was telling on her more. As friends had babies and talked of their husbands’ indelicate appetites she felt like screaming, because everyone assumed her childlessness was her own fault.

‘Oh, Isabel must be barren.’ She knew what was being said after seven years of marriage, and the sympathy all went to Henry. Poor Henry. To be saddled with a barren wife. She gritted her teeth together and pressed her forehead on the cool glass of the mirror.

After a year of marriage, one night she had brushed out her long brown hair and, when she was sure the servants were all in bed, crept surreptitiously to her husband’s room wearing just her chemise. She was a buxom girl with large firm breasts, and had slipped into bed beside Henry, thinking that maybe he was shyer than she was. She had put her arms around him and tried to draw him to her. In his sleep he had put out his own arms and then, opening his eyes, had recoiled from her.

She would never forget the look of horror and repulsion on his face. He had stood by the bed and upbraided her soundly on the wantonness she had displayed. He had reminded her that good women from good families did not lower themselves to the same level as harlots. Isabel had sat up in the bed white with shame and shock and listened to him. But after that night a hatred for him had begun to grow in her.