‘She isn’t worried about that.’

Ava glanced at Vivian. Read her in an instant. ‘Oh, my good Lord, Vivi. It’s your heart and hymen, isn’t it?’

Vivian loved the way Ava had shortened her name – no one had ever done that before – but she could hardly believe the word she had just used. One that Vivian was only aware of because as a child she used to read her father’s encyclopedic books on dull, rainy afternoons, hovering with particular interest over the sections about the human body. ‘Do you have to be so biological about the matter?’ she gasped.

‘Did you have to be so romantic? I suppose you think you’re in love with him.’

‘At the time I did.’

‘But not now?’

‘No.’

‘Well, that’s something.’

‘Is it? I’d have thought it was far, far worse.’

‘No, much worse to be in love, I should imagine. Much harder.’ Ava grinned, then reached into her bag and pulled out a silver cigarette case. She offered Vivian one but Vivian knew her mother would be watching from the window so didn’t dare accept. Ava lit her own using a slim, engraved silver lighter. ‘You’re not pregnant, are you?’ she asked as she breathed out the blue smoke into the air.

Vivian blushed. She could not believe Ava had actually said the word! Everyone she knew coyly referred to the state as ‘with child’ or ‘expecting’, even when the mother was a respectably married woman. ‘No.’

‘Well, that’s all right then.’

‘It’s anything but. They are treating me like damaged goods. Practically chaining me to the house whilst they are all running around like headless chickens trying to find me a husband before anyone finds out I’m not a virgin.’ Vivian couldn’t hide the outrage in her voice.

‘Gosh, how boring for you.’

The outrage instantly evaporated; Vivian wanted to laugh for the first time in weeks. Ava had such a perfect way of looking at everything. She seemed to think that perhaps this didn’t have to be a tragedy after all. Or even a drama.

‘They are trying to guess how much everyone knows. Are people avoiding me because I made a show by pursuing him so ardently, or has . . .’ Vivian paused, not sure how to say what she wanted to. ‘Or has word of my indiscretion leaked?’

‘I haven’t heard of it, and I hear absolutely everything.’

‘Oh, thank you, Ava.’

‘Chin up, darling. I’m sure they’ll find you someone top-drawer. You have such a lovely face. Some faces are so hopeless, aren’t they? Tight with correctness most of the time and then shockingly they break up into cunning or hatred in an instant. Yours doesn’t do that. You are lovely, Vivi.’ Ava gazed at Vivian with sincere appreciation and approval, and Vivian began to get a vague whisper of a sense that things could be decent again. She was not always going to be loathed and disappointing.

Flushed with the success of their intimacy, she dared to ask, ‘And what about you, Ava? Who shall you have?’