‘Have you had a beastly day?’ she asked. She always felt the onus of conversation. Mother had instilled in her a necessity to be amusing.

‘Why would you ask that?’

‘You don’t seem your usual self.’

‘I’m bored,’ he sighed.

His words came down like a governess’s ruler. A stinging thwack. No! His emotions were so far from her own, it was a shock. She was nervous and desperate, then light-headed and excitable by turn, or at least she had been until he had declared that he was bored. Bored? Being bored was the worst. It was so close to indifference. Did she bore him? It was not possible to ask. She mustn’t. She really mustn’t. ‘Do I bore you?’ She looked him in the face, aware that her eyes must be glinting with hurt.

‘All girls are bores. To some extent,’ he replied with another sigh.

Betraying, stupid tears immediately crawled on to her eyelashes. She turned away from him and forced herself not to dip her head. No one must notice. The worst thing was, what he said was true. Sometimes she felt it herself. Girls, virgins, were all kittens, still ambiguous and folded like tiny green shoots in allotments. Closed, tight. Then, with a loose, relaxed smile, he added, ‘Women are wonderful.’ Blooming flowers were more desirable. Even fat, overblown roses had something interesting about them. The smile was some sort of a balm, but she was still unsure. Where did she fall in his estimation? Girl or woman? She was eighteen. Not a girl, and yet she’d never been kissed.

A girl.

Then he seemed to lose interest in the thought and asked, ‘I can’t remember, do you play bridge?’ Vivian considered bridge an old woman’s game. She thought about the endless afternoons her mother and her friends whiled away, cards slipping from their hands to the table, brows furrowed with concentration or arching with glee. Clock ticking. Vivian, Susan and Babe, all dressed in velveteen day dresses with mid-length sleeves, sat by and looked on. Hers was green, Susan and Babe in pink. They were too young for bridge but too old for children’s board games; even if Susan might still have liked a game of snakes and ladders with Babe, Vivian’s presence somehow wouldn’t allow it. It was most fun when the weather was right for croquet. Did he want her to play bridge? Lady Feversham was a demon at the game, known for it throughout London. Vivian was not sure why this thought unsettled her, but it did. An older, married woman. She ought not to be in the picture but Vivian held a vague, indefinable sense that she was. Oh, she wished she’d paid closer attention to the rules.

‘No, I don’t know how, but I could learn. You could teach me.’

He didn’t look keen. ‘You’re more of an outdoors sort of girl,’ he asserted confidently.

‘Yes.’ It seemed easier to agree. It was true that she liked being out of the house. She liked striding down Bond Street or Piccadilly, dipping into shops and coffee houses. Did that count as outdoorsy?