His parents had offered to take him together to New College, where Martin had once been a student. What a kick my son would have got out of that, thought Marianne. Which father wouldn’t? He had, however, hidden his disappointment when A.P. said he would like to be ferried with his belongings by Marianne.

If Moira too had felt rebuffed, it was for her as for Martin just one more disappointment. Eventually they would surely come to see it as Marianne had. How could the lad have borne for them to take him to college together, when he knew they would not be under the same roof when he returned?

Moira was still living in the house and Martin had moved into a service flat until he found a place suitable to accommodate A.P.

Marianne recalled her conversation with A.P. when he had clutched as at a straw at her telling him to consider her place his second home. He would now have three to choose from, but given the circumstances would not know a real home again until eventually he himself set up home.

A telephone call from Laura interrupted Marianne’s musing.

‘Bessie’s having a bonfire party tonight. Fancy coming along?’

‘I have a date with Simon.’

‘He’s welcome to come, too.’

‘I’m not sure that fireworks are his scene—’

‘Come off it, Marianne! He’s an American. Lighting fireworks on every possible national holiday is their popular pastime. But any excuse for his not meeting the family, and for none of us meeting him, will do! This is beginning to get a bit hurtful, Marianne.’

With that Laura rang off, leaving Marianne angry both with her and with herself.

Briefly she paced the room she sometimes thought of as her cell. The place in which she was imprisoned with her work, hour after hour, day after day.

Self-imprisonment, but that’s my privilege. If I marry Simon, he’ll make demands on my time when he isn’t working, or suffers an attack of writer’s block. Ralph had left for work early in the morning and returned in the evening when Marianne was ready to put the cover on her typewriter. Life with Simon will be unpredictable and gone will be my regime.

Will be? Or would be? Indecisiveness was still with her. Could she live without him? Did they love each other enough to make the concessions necessary for two writers to share a life and continue to meet their deadlines?

Nor, for Marianne, was a deadline her sole incentive. There was and always had been within her a creative dynamo that drove her without respite until a novel was complete. How would Simon live with that – the part of her he didn’t yet know? With a woman who sometimes got up in the middle of the night to set on paper ideas that would not let her sleep.