It was a unique afternoon, made exquisite and awful with anticipation. She resolved not to sit about watching the clock but instead would sort out all of Mabel’s clothes; check what still fitted and what didn’t, darn and trim if necessary. It was not bath night, and drawing a tub would fetch attention. The best she could do was strip and sponge. The problem of what to wear. At first she tried on her lilac georgette, but then decided it looked irksomely pretty and girlish. Anything in silk had to be discounted as too obviously grand. In the end she settled on a cobalt-blue cotton dress, not because it was her favourite but because it was the one she happened to be trying on when she saw him heading up her garden path. He was exactly on time. To the minute. She was pleased and grateful. She checked herself in the glass. It was funny: sometimes she was reasonably confident that she was still pleasant to look at; other times she feared she was simply a fright. This evening, luckily, her skin seemed smooth and clean, blemish free. Her hair was obliging, genuinely bright; it didn’t dare be mousy. It had also curled and fallen in a pleasing way, not demure. There seemed to be something energetic about her appearance. She seemed alive, fluid. Open. To possibilities.

He banged on the door using the brass knocker. She dashed to open it wide before Cook was alerted, but then didn’t know how to greet him. A broad social beam wouldn’t be right; she didn’t want to appear so straightforwardly polite and welcoming. She needed to offer him more than commonplace good manners but she had to be careful not to seem seductive or knowing – or worse, nervous and naïve.

He slipped off his shoes before he entered the house, then carefully placed them on the inside mat. It was practical; they were muddy, and although only low people generally took their shoes off at the door, Vivian felt he knew this and, since he knew this but still did so, was somehow making a point. The point was not that he was low; it was that he routinely squashed all convention. It was as though he was finding them a new place to inhabit, somewhere outside the rules.

Or was it that it was simply sensible not to trail mud?

It was hard not to overthink the situation.

They were shiny, his shoes, recently polished. She felt a flush of pleasure that he had made an effort, and of embarrassment that she could see the weave of his socks. Perhaps he was wearing a pair she’d seen his mother knit. She felt very close to him. To show that she understood they were breaking small rules, she bent down and picked up the shoes. Her fingers hooked into the heel; they felt warm with his body heat. His feet had just been there. It was wonderfully, oddly intimate. The pit of her stomach slipped, as though she’d swallowed something pleasant yet ethereal. It was outside her experience. She thought of blancmange but was dissatisfied that the idea was so pedestrian and inadequate. She had no vocabulary for what she felt about him. She put the shoes in the cupboard, banging the door closed.