I told them. I’d like to be able to say I chose the trade I did because of the pylon, because if I hadn’t been so ignorant I’d never have climbed it and brought about Daniel’s death. A kind of redress or compensation. But that wasn’t the reason. I said the first thing that came into my head, put there by the fact that this was what Beryl’s son did, the one who had moved out of the room I was going to rent.

“I’m going to be an electrician,” I said.

My parents exploded. Dad reminded me this was his own father’s trade and asked me if I was returning to the working class out of spite. Mum said a woman couldn’t be an electrician. No one would employ her. All this made me begin to like the idea. From coming out with something wild, a mere association of ideas, I was getting quite keen. I’d do it properly, I thought, I’d get a degree in it or the nearest thing, I’d get as highly qualified as I could. And I did. I went to college—well, two colleges—for a total of four years, and worked in the students’ canteen for the last one because my grant ran out. I said none of this and predicted none of it but answered them that being an electrician was a useful trade.

September was when I began, just a year after our ill-fated Exodus. Up till then I had been living with Beryl, right on the top of one of the highest tower blocks in west London. That suited me fine. I kept off the dole and took odd jobs, helped along by the wonderful and varied references she wrote for me, and studying basic electrics from a library book on wiring and lighting. Unwise, as it happened, because I had to relearn all I had picked up.

Silver I had never heard from. I had long ago stopped writing to Russia Road and hardened my heart, as you do in this sort of situation, telling yourself that if he doesn’t want you, you certainly don’t want him. And so forth. I even found myself another boyfriend, an Indian called Romesh. Just before I went off to my college in the north of England, Beryl told me Silver was back from Africa but never came to Russia Road. His mother said he was due to return to university to read, in Beryl’s own words, “social services.” I thought that meant Queen Mary College. Hearing about him brought me such a pang, in spite of Romesh and my well-planned future, that I wrote to him there but got no answer.