The glance he gave her was as if he had said, ‘Touché’. Or ought she to interpret it as: ‘We’re quits in the first round’? A sparring bout was what their brief exchange had felt like and when the party went to the table, Marianne was none too pleased to find Simon Newman seated beside her.

It wasn’t just her ruffled ego, or his bad manners in not pretending he had heard of her. There was something about him she found disturbing, and so it continued. A consciousness of his presence even while her attention was engaged by others.

As course followed course, and the wine and the talk flowed, Marianne played the role required of her, dispensing charm to the industrialists, discussing Tory concerns with Arnold’s colleagues, promising the cabinet minister a signed copy of her next novel, and winking surreptitiously at Matthew and Pete when she received from them tongue-in-cheek glances.

Only with the cultured American on her right did she make no effort whatsoever, replying when he addressed her and immediately turning away.

Not until late that night, when she was finally alone and forced herself to examine her behaviour, did Marianne let herself recognize the reason for it. She had not expected ever to encounter a man capable of resurrecting in her the feelings she had thought buried alongside her husband, nor would she have wished it.

Simon Newman was that man.

Chapter Ten

Bessie awoke on her birthday and tiptoed downstairs to see if the mail had arrived. Her relatives never forgot to send her a card. And now she was ten, perhaps they would stop calling her ‘little Bessie’!

She also got cards from her friends, but they didn’t come through the letter-box. If her birthday was on a weekday they were given to her at school. This year, though, it was on a Saturday and she wouldn’t receive them until her party, this afternoon.

There was no sign of the postman when she peeped through the living-room window and she went to the kitchen to get herself some bread and jam.

Why was I born with a sweet tooth? But Janis was, too, and she’s slim. Not tubby like me! And why do Jeremy and A.P. have to tease me about it? It isn’t fair!

These were the thoughts of the none-too-happy child Bessie had become, though her mother was blissfully unaware of it. Having supplied her child with a father, and the added bonus of a sister and a brother, it had not occurred to Laura that all might not be well.

The little girl, however, had, after her initial euphoria, found the change wrought in her life not in every way to her liking.