‘If he’d said that, I wouldn’t blame him,’ Martin replied, ‘and could be what’s helped him to survive in one piece is his having you to come to. All he said, though, was that when he goes off to college, in October, there’d be no reason for his parents to stay married. Moira told him she agreed and I said it was a sensible suggestion.’

‘Fortunately for that lad,’ said Marianne, ‘he is not only sensible, but also philosophical.’

But what a way to end a marriage! Clinical was the word for it, and their child the instigator of what he knew was best for them.

‘Well, he’s your grandson, isn’t he?’ Martin answered dryly. ‘He wanted to be the one to tell you, but I drew the line at that.’

‘When are he and Jeremy leaving on their travels?’

‘Europe on a shoestring, you mean! What I wouldn’t give to relive that time in my own life. Someone once remarked to me that youth goes unappreciated by the young. With the benefit of hindsight I had to agree. And before you know it, you’re looking back on it,’ Martin added.

Marianne sensed the motley emotion churning within him. How wouldn’t it, now he and Moira had finally called it quits? And gone forever was the breathless quality of dreams as yet unrealized with which he had hand in hand set forth with her.

Never was there a truer example of someone little by little having the stars knocked from their eyes than Marianne’s son. Like his father, Martin was a romantic. It was there in the lyrics he wrote and had helped, together with Andy’s music, to achieve the popular success their partnership had accrued.

‘I haven’t yet heard that new song of yours that’s doing so well in the charts,’ she said to him.

‘It isn’t one of our usual boy-meets-girl ballads, Mum. I sat down one night and wrote some lyrics about a guy getting screwed by life – and felt like calling the song “Poor Martin”! Andy was reluctant to set them to music. Now, he thinks like I do that this could be a turning point for us. Since it hit the charts, our producer’s been seeing it that way, too. Cynicism, it seems, is a highly marketable product. Given my own experience, I ought not to be surprised.’

‘On a personal level, though, it can be highly erosive,’ Marianne answered. ‘Do your mother a favour, love, try not to let your experience erode your future—’

‘On a personal level I don’t seem to have one.’

Marianne put her hand on his.