“What will you tell your wife?” she asked. It was five in the morning, blackbirds were singing fit to burst outside, and he was shambling, naked, round the room retrieving his clothes.

“She’ll blame herself,” he said. “ We’ve been through a bad time lately.”

“So you only phoned me because you had a row with your wife?” Mary spoke carefully. If she made too many demands on him, he might not see her again.

“No,” he said. “Of course not. It wasn’t like that. You can’t understand what she’s like. I’ve been looking for an excuse since the night of the barbecue.”

And that was true as well, he thought. She had haunted him. The phone call might have been an impulse, a way of escaping from his wife, a way of proving to himself that he was still attractive, but it was hard to forget Mary Raven.

After that they met every week, at least once, sometimes twice. Usually he came to Mary’s flat. He never stayed the night again. She never introduced him to her other friends. They teased her about her secret lover, but she just smiled. That first joyous elation returned, but only occasionally, and she persisted with him in the hope that it would last.

Perhaps I should be satisfied with those moments, Mary thought, sitting in the car as the light faded and the wind blew stronger than ever. But she knew she wanted more than that.

In the Tower the dining room was decorated as it always was on March 1, with vases of daffodils. They were everywhere, on the polished wood table and on the windowsills and even standing on the floor. In the old days, when Anthony Parry was still alive, they would have been forced to listen to records of Max Boyce live at the Neath Rugby Club and even to male choirs singing the Welsh national anthem. Now the daffodils were enough to remind them of St. David’s Day.

No-one except Carolyn noticed that Alice had been crying. If they saw that her eyes were red, it would never have occurred to them that she might be upset. She was not the sort to howl alone in her bedroom. She was made, they all thought, of sterner stuff. She stood at the head of the table ladling soup into bowls, an indomitable English lady, secretary of the WI, organiser of the village horticultural society, and now founding member of the Save Brinkbonnie campaign. She was wearing clothes she must have had for years: flared purple trousers that she had bought, in fact, when she had taken the boys for a trip to London in 1969 and a silk tunic her husband had brought home from a trip to Hong Kong.