Another shocked silence, then Sylvia Saunders hooted with laughter. Mary Finnegan and Miriam Trott joined in, and soon they were all laughing. Except Dulcie.

Grace looked around, genuinely baffled. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘What’s so funny?’

‘Oh, Duffield!’ Sylvia shook her head, wiping tears from her eyes. ‘And they say romance is dead!’

‘There’s nothing romantic about it,’ Grace insisted, turning redder. ‘He had a spare ticket and thought I might be interested.’

The other girls laughed even more.

‘Oh, Duffers, what are we going to do with you?’ Hilda Wharton shook her head pityingly.

‘Don’t you know when a man is showing an interest in you?’ Mary Finnegan put in.

‘Showing an interest? But I don’t—’ Realisation dawned on Grace’s plain face. ‘But it’s nothing like that! Honestly, it isn’t.’

But the more she tried to insist, the more the other girls laughed.

‘You ought to be careful, Moore,’ Miriam Trott put in with a malicious little smile. ‘It looks as if you’re going to lose your Dr Logan.’

‘No, really. He’d never look twice at someone like me. He was probably just being polite …’

This last comment was aimed at Dulcie. She could sense the pleading look Grace was sending her, but refused to look her in the eye.

Dulcie couldn’t bring herself to speak to her room-mate for the rest of the evening. She made an excuse to go to bed early and was under the covers, pretending to be asleep, when Grace came to their room later.

Dulcie heard her blundering around in the dark, knocking things flying.

Finally, as she got into bed, Grace whispered, ‘Moore? Are you awake?’

Dulcie thought about not replying. But then she hissed back, ‘Not much chance of sleep with you acting like a bull in a china shop!’

‘Sorry.’ There was a pause, then Grace whispered, ‘I just wanted you to know – you’ve got nothing to worry about.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘You know – what the other girls were saying. About Dr Logan and me? I’m sure he didn’t mean anything by it when he offered me that ticket. It was just a kind gesture, that’s all.’

Dulcie burned with fury. She didn’t need pity from the likes of Grace Duffield!

‘I know there’s nothing to it,’ she snapped back. ‘How could there be, when you’re engaged to someone else?’

Grace fell silent, and Dulcie knew her barb had hit home.

She threw off her covers and sat up, staring at Grace in the darkness. She could make out her tall, gawky shape sitting on the edge of her bed, her head hanging low.

‘I just wonder that you decided to accept the invitation, that’s all,’ she said.

Grace’s head lifted. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean it’s hardly right for a girl to be seen around town with another man when she’s supposed to be marrying someone else.’

‘But it’s nothing like that. I told you—’

‘I know what you said. But I’m not sure what your fiancé would think about it.’