She was surprised to find she had kept the flyer, and kept it hidden. Indeed, she had hidden the whole event almost as soon as it had happened, shoving it in a shadowy corner of memory eventually to be forgotten. For some people, she supposed, the very discomfort of that experience would have sparked changes that would shape a future very different from the past. But far from being a trigger for change, that strange, disquieting afternoon had actually reinforced the life she had chosen.

So why had she kept the flyer?

She had always shied away from change: her life now was fundamentally the same as her life then. But what she really wished now was that she had made some changes back then. She wanted another shot at life. She wished she’d gone to university and studied literature; she wished she’d become the teacher she had long wanted to be; she wished she’d written about the power and intimacy of letters. She wished all the changes she’d like to benefit from now had been made long ago, leaving her with the same comfort and security she currently enjoyed, but a little more stimulated, a little more satisfied.

It would have helped if she were more like her sister, more resilient, more adventurous, more independent. Maggie completed her university degree and joined the public service; she now held a senior position in the Department of Labour. Her sister had taken a courageous leap, and had reaped benefits. And the Russian girl, too, also resilient, also adventurous, had wrought changes greater than anyone Sylvie knew.

She closed her eyes and rested her head on her hands. Outwardly, very little might have changed, but she felt more restless than ever before, and bothered by longings for something different, something more. The possibilities that had stretched before the nineteen-year-old girl who’d married Leonard Morrow had been so vibrant, but now it seemed as if, one by one, the lights had blown and not been replaced. She wondered if it was the plight of all women born in the 1930s to gather more and more regrets with the years, regrets fertilised by later generations of girls leading lives that she and her contemporaries wouldn’t, indeed couldn’t, have dreamed of.

She wanted to be as happy as she once was — not that she knew anymore what would make her happy. And why did she, or anyone for that matter, believe they had a right to happiness? Did the Russian girl? Did the vast majority of people? And it occurred to her that happiness, like beach holidays and a full purse at the supermarket, might well be a luxury, the privilege of the privileged.