‘As was once done to another Jew,’ Bill said wryly.

‘And the rest of us are still paying for it. It must be hard for you to relate all this to the Moira you knew.’

‘And I would like to hear her side of this story. It seems to me that another lunch shared by old friends is called for, Martin. I’ll give her a ring.’

Thus it was that Marianne’s dilemma was fortuitously solved. Bill decided to invite Moira to dine at home with him and Sukey. By the end of the evening both he and his wife had arrived at the conclusion Marianne had.

It was Sukey who accompanied Moira on her first visit to the eminent psychoanalyst in whom Martin, though it was necessary for him to pretend ignorance of what his friends had engineered, allowed himself to put his hope.

Chapter Nine

Arnold lost his gamble as Marianne had feared he might. Matthew and Pete were rehearsing a play in London and accepted his invitation with alacrity.

‘I ought not to have agreed to your cunning bargain!’ he fumed to her as they stood together in a cocktail lounge at the Inn on the Park awaiting his assorted guests.

‘If you hadn’t, I wouldn’t be here, done up to the nines, when I’d much prefer not to be,’ she countered, ‘and I’m about to make another bargain with you, Arnold. I shall perform my role with good grace and you must show the same to Matthew and Pete. If you don’t I shall disgrace you by getting drunk, which I only did once in my life and Ralph told me, after I’d passed out and he’d brought me round, that I’d taken off my shoes and danced on the table.’

‘I can only hope that wasn’t at one of his dinner parties!’

‘It was at one of mine.’

‘You gave separate parties, did you?’

‘One might just as well try mixing oil and water,’ Marianne replied, ‘as people from the arts with those who have cash registers where their hearts should be. The time I got drunk some of my pals were helping me celebrate the aspect of getting one’s first novel published that none but writers and the like would understand.’

‘Do you still see those people now you’re successful?’

‘Did you drop your old friends after you were knighted?’ Marianne responded.

‘I haven’t had time to acquire many.’

‘Me neither, but somehow I have. And I have to tell you you’ve missed a lot, Arnold. To reach the peak of ambition with nothing but that in view has to be a lonely climb, and I imagine you’re feeling the chill now you’re there.’

Marianne paused pensively while watching a lady mount the ornate staircase and head for the powder room – did she know she had a ladder in her wispy black tights?