In the car on the way home, she kept her little rucksack on her knee and was distinctively herself: looking round her out the window, taking everything in, questioning him sensibly about what had happened. He repeated to her all the detail that was becoming mythic, about Jane Ogden’s new show, Zachary keeling over in the gallery, hitting his head on the desk. — But why, but why? Grace said, staring straight ahead through the windscreen, rocking backwards and forwards just perceptibly in a childish rhythm, hugging the rucksack that she wouldn’t put down on the back seat, or on the floor. At some point she announced that she was starving, and they stopped at a motorway service station. She ate something disgusting, with every sign of hearty appetite – a full English breakfast; and then shortly afterwards, when they were on the motorway again, he had to pull over quickly onto the hard shoulder. She jumped out of the car and vomited into the tall grass full of daisies, which was blowing in sensuous long ripples in the wind.

— That was melodramatic, she said when she sat beside him again, wiping her mouth. — Sorry.

— It’s a time for melodrama, he said. — You do whatever you need to.

The journey seemed twice as far as when he’d driven up to fetch her. Grace fiddled with the radio, found some pop music which Alex tolerated because he understood it was difficult for her to speak. Then she got out her phone and began sending texts. — So is that your new boyfriend? he asked.

— Jesus, no, she said. — Just some guy I met at a party.

He wanted to warn her to hold herself back from the guys she met at parties, to keep herself aloof in the upper sphere where she belonged, because she was an exceptional, rare being. But it wasn’t the moment for that. He talked to her instead about his own father, who had died when he was about the same age as she was now. Grace listened attentively, rocking in her seat, although he guessed she could hardly make any connection between what was happening to her, tearing up her life, and his old story worn smooth in history.