‘Shall I tell you why I did? It was hidden under all that stuff now on the floor. While searching for the magazine – which I still haven’t found – I accidentally knocked that lot off the table with my elbow. If we hadn’t had the trouble with Bessie we’ve had, I should just have smiled and returned it to its hiding place. But with a kid like her – well, who knows what’s going on in her mind and what it could later lead to?’

A silence followed and it was as though a wall had risen between them. Not a wall, my past, thought Laura. And how incongruous was the setting, the ambience of innocence all around me, she registered eyeing the little-girl decor, frilly curtains at the windows, the flounced dressing table, the teddy bear Bessie still slept with propped up on the pretty pink duvet.

‘I’m the woman I am, Jake,’ Laura said quietly, ‘and it’s come as a shock to you. If you don’t love me enough to live with what you now know, I’m better off without you. Would you mind putting Bessie’s exercise book back exactly where you found it? I don’t want her damaged by this. I’ll help you gather up the stuff you knocked on the floor.’

But while they shared the task, they remained worlds apart. ‘Worlds’ is the right word, thought Laura. It isn’t the age difference. It’s how we lived before we met and how we tick. It would be a relief not to have to pretend any more. For Laura not to have to watch her tongue.

For two pins she’d call it a day, here and now. Pack her things and Bessie’s and ask Marianne to put them up till she found a flat.

‘Let’s get a move on with this,’ she said. ‘Or Bessie will soon be home from Val’s party—’

‘But Janis, no doubt, will go somewhere after the theatre and stay out half the night! And Jeremy hasn’t kept in touch since he left England.’

‘It’s time you stopped expecting him to,’ Laura replied.

‘In your opinion.’

If Laura called it a day, she’d be walking out on Janis and Jeremy, too. ‘I also have an opinion about your expectations of Janis. Let me put it to you this way. What young people can’t do with their parents’ approval, they are just as likely to do without it. You might consider attaching that to Jeremy also, since he’s about to leave home.’

Laura paused briefly. ‘But since I may not be their mum for much longer, I should perhaps keep my opinions to myself.’