‘We’ll see you tomorrow,’ said Jeremy, sounding dazed, as well he might.

‘I am not too sure about that,’ Rachel replied.

A moment later the car was zooming down the drive.

Jeremy stopped wiping lipstick off his face. ‘What the hell did you do to her, A.P.?’

‘I’m afraid it’s a question of what I didn’t do to her.’ A.P. felt in his pocket for the key the butler had reluctantly provided and let them into the house.

‘Are you going to stay a virgin for the rest of your life?’

‘Just until I find the right girl. I imagine we shall now be left to explore West and East Berlin unescorted, and I have to say I’d prefer that. If we’re distracted by girls, it’s bound to dilute our impressions, and I might one day need to dip into mine for something I’m writing.’

‘One way and another I’m beginning to see myself as the wrong companion for you on this trip,’ Jeremy said scathingly as they tiptoed upstairs. ‘It ought to have been your grandmother!’

Chapter Eleven

October 1987 was a month that Marianne was unlikely to forget, she thought while gazing through her study window to where once had been her beautiful garden.

It was now 5 November, the mist of approaching winter hovering, and there would be no shortage of fallen branches for the children to burn on their Guy Fawkes bonfires tonight.

The hurricane that had wreaked havoc in the south of England, changing the landscape as it felled the sturdiest of ancient trees, tearing tiles from rooftops and mowing down fences, had done its worst to the ornamental bushes Marianne and Ralph had planted together years ago.

Were that not depressing enough, a stock market crash had followed, reminding Marianne that it was some time since she had met with her stockbroker, that being a widow put you in control of matters you’d been pleased to leave in your husband’s hands.

Marianne’s disinterest in how her earnings were invested had been a source of amusement to Ralph. ‘Yet you think of yourself as an independent woman,’ he had once said. She still did. Why else was she keeping Simon waiting for an answer to his asking her to marry him? He had finally got around to it last week – another reason for October being memorable.

Etched upon her memory too was the day she had driven her grandson to Oxford to enter the next phase of his life. Amid the dreaming spires where intellect was for a brief while nurtured before the real business of living began.