‘Not really.’ She hesitated. No doubt he would get the full story from Clarissa if he bothered to ask, but she really couldn’t go into it right now. She was mentally and physically exhausted after the events of the day and she knew she’d have bruises all over from her tumble at the park, but it wasn’t so much all that as Edward Forsythe himself that had her at sixes and sevens. Now she said, her voice deliberately cool, ‘Circumstances dictated the move, that’s all.’ Changing the subject, she added, ‘London must be very exciting, Mr Forsythe.’

‘Edward, please.’ He slowed down to avoid a wood pigeon pecking at something on the dusty road and then sounded his horn when it showed no intention of getting out of the way, causing it to fly off with a great flapping of wings. ‘Yes, I suppose you could say London’s exciting – certainly there are more forms of entertainment than one can shake a stick at. And when the hotels and restaurants close and the theatres empty and so on, dancers can go on to one of the new clubs that have sprung up since the war like the Top Hat or Mother Hubbard’s or the Kit-Kat Club and dance till dawn. The flappers make the most of that,’ he finished somewhat sardonically.

She had heard the term before for the bright young things in flimsy dresses of muslin, chiffon and crêpe de Chine who shimmied the nights away in a whirl of fringes, tassels and beads, and who had a growing reputation for being frivolous and undisciplined and carefree. Again she glanced at him from under her eyelashes. ‘You don’t approve of the freedom of the modern woman?’

‘On the contrary. I’m all for women having equality in every realm, be it in medicine or law, academia, business or politics, and certainly they should have been given the same voting rights as men decades ago. The fact that it was only last year that equal terms in marriage were finally awarded to their sex is shameful. However, I can’t help thinking that the fight by the suffragettes in the past and which is continued by women like my sister and yourself today was for more than equipping the social butterfly type to flaunt her freedom by showing a distinct lack of morality.’

Now Ruby twisted in her seat to stare at him. ‘So in other words, a woman should only have as much freedom as you approve of?’

‘That isn’t what I said.’

‘I think it is.’

‘No,’ he said a little testily. ‘I just don’t think a brazen image of womanhood and seeming lack of seriousness or interest regarding the important issues of life this world faces is attractive.’