Laura had begun by inviting Bessie to lunch with her at the restaurant in Regent’s Park Zoo, expecting her daughter’s reply to be a reminder that she was dieting. Instead, the invitation was accepted and the child had done her best to eat something.

Afterwards they had fed buns to the animals, a somewhat poignant exercise for Laura given the circumstances.

It would be some time before Bessie was able to enjoy and digest a normal diet, but she was receiving affectionate encouragement from her family, a more positive form of attention than her self-inflicted starvation had commanded, and at her own request was no longer seeing the psychoanalyst.

The summer vacation period over, she had now returned to school, but Laura had continued to set aside time for her. On Saturday mornings they shopped for this, or that, in Hampstead High Street together and lunched at one of the cafes where other little girls were to be seen with their mothers.

Bessie was now taking an interest in clothes too, and today Laura had bought her a new outfit from the children’s boutique on Heath Street. Her weight was not yet such to fill out the garments her height required, but it was still early days and Laura was right now a far happier mum, she reflected gratefully on the evening her peace was due for a battering again.

Nathan had kept in touch by telephone and had said that displaying trust in Bessie was now essential to ensure there would not be a setback. If the child thought that gorging and afterwards making herself vomit was still what her parents expected she might do, it would damage the self-confidence she was gradually building.

She had recently been allowed to resume outings without supervision and was now, wearing her new outfit, at her friend Val’s birthday party. Though some of the little girls she knew had eschewed the company of an unsightly anorexic, Val had remained steadfast and theirs seemed to Laura a friendship likely to endure throughout their lives.

Like mine with Peggy Morris, she thought. Peggy alone of all my old pals in Manchester didn’t cut me off when I became an unmarried mum. Some of the others though, Laura had heard, were later not averse to letting drop that they went to school with me, when I became famous as well as infamous!

Peggy now lived in Melbourne and they saw each other only when she came to England to see her folks. True friends, Laura had learned, were the few you still had when life had weeded the others out. It was as well that people had families to rely on.