I had none of the sort of clothes you wear for parties. I wore jeans all the time, I still do, though they’re designer jeans now and washed each time they’re worn. My husband doesn’t notice what I wear. He once said he no longer noticed what I looked like and I took it for a compliment. Washing had been a problem at old Mrs. Fisherton’s. I didn’t know about launderettes, you don’t if you live in the country. It was Beryl who told me there was one in Clifton Road and another in the Harrow Road. But that useful tip was in the future and I was still washing things by hand and hanging them over the kitchen sink or the bath. So the jeans I wore to have lunch with Max and Selina had been worn at least four times since I last washed them and my sweatshirt (red with GUP on it in black letters) was clean but creased. Old Mrs. Fisherton’s iron flashed and fizzled when I tried to use it and I didn’t know about electricity in those days.

That there would just be the three of us was what I had expected. Instead I found a full-scale luncheon party with drinks first in the yellow and emerald drawing room. Selina looked me up and down reflectively but said nothing. She was wearing a very short pink dress with a little flared skirt, pink shoes and the pearls. In the drawing room there was champagne already poured into the right sort of glasses on a tray and fizzy water or orange juice for those who preferred it and a great deal of the sort of food I’ve always disliked, bits of things on little squares of bread or toast or pastry. As I took a glass of champagne I tried to understand why they were doing all this for me. I had scarcely seen them since before Christmas, and now suddenly they were putting on a full-blown party for my birthday. Later on I got used to this pattern of behavior, a kind of hard-soft technique, hot-cold or hawks and doves, and now I think the explanation is simple. They didn’t want me, they didn’t much like me, and perhaps they regretted their generosity in letting me have the flat. Those were their hawkish times. And then their consciences would trouble them, they became doveish and “made it up” to me in disproportionate gestures like this party.