From the first time they went babysitting, Christine could see how Lydia was getting it wrong with Alex. She took all afternoon putting on one thing after another, trying too hard, deciding eventually on an antique blouse made of black silk chiffon embroidered with jet beads, worn over jeans, which wasn’t convincing as an outfit suitable for childcare. Also she wore too much make-up, as well as her fox fur collar. Alex opened the door to them: he and Juliet were renting a little terraced cottage in Kensal Rise, with railings and a narrow strip of front garden where Juliet grew herbs in pots. He did seem to remember the girls vaguely, but not their names. When they said they were babysitting he called suspiciously for Juliet, who came out from the back kitchen, hobbled by her little boy clinging to her knees.

— Alex, you haven’t forgotten! Juliet reproached him, hoisting the boy up onto her hip; she was very small and Sandy was very tall and lean and pale, so he couldn’t help looking like one of those overgrown children, hanging on to babyhood too long. — We’re going out to dinner at the Fairlies’. These are the girls I told you about. Say hello, Sandy.

Sandy hid his face against his mother, fingering her breast self-consciously.

— Christ, Jules, Alex said. — I don’t want to go to dinner at the Fairlies’. We don’t even like the Fairlies. Ring up and tell them Sandy’s ill or something. And you can send these girls away.

It was obvious that he and his wife were in the middle of some bitter wrangle, much bigger than this one particular evening; Christine felt Lydia’s alert attention to each sign. Alex returned inside his study and closed the door, hardly looking at them. — Don’t take any notice, Juliet said smoothly. — He has to have his little sulk. You know what men are like.

Both the girls sided at once, unfairly, with Alex – Christine because of the French classes, and the hypocrite lecteur. Sentimentally, they took the side of art and the closed study door, against the tedium of childcare. Juliet might have been small, but there was something pugnacious and resolved about her: she was quick and light on her feet, with curling black hair caught up in a comb, dangling painted earrings in the shape of parrots, and a pale, poised little face, pretty and sharp. When she diminished Alex and cut him down to size, the girls knew how she appraised them too in her blunt way, seeing through them and their romance across her miles of married experience. She disappeared into Alex’s study, leaving the girls with Sandy, who wept and pressed himself against the crack in the door as if he could squeeze through it after his mother.