She switched on the ignition and pulled out into the street. Terrence, standing in the doorway of the wine bar, waved. ‘Bloody cuckoo!’ Laura shouted, but she returned the wave in case she should decide that she was grateful to him for filling the gap left at the Old Rectory.

‘Bloody Nicholas and bloody Emily.’ She changed gear to overtake a van and speed on her way out of town. ‘They can’t hold me any more. I shall fight free from the tentacles of conscience,’ she shouted over her shoulder to the cat imprisoned in its basket on the back seat. ‘I,’ she shouted, ‘can ration my love for them.’ Nicholas, Emily, Helen, Christopher, Margaret and insolent Terrence would be tucked away out of sight in the cubby-holes of her mind to be thought of occasionally with love or affection, just as she thought of the American professor, the Hungarian painter, and of Clug. The immediate problem was to reduce Claud to similar, manageable size, find a secure cubby-hole for him.

Laura stopped to buy petrol, have her oil and tyres checked.

Had the djinn escaped from the bottle? Who would help her get it back? Up to now she had always been able to control her emotions, always kept love affairs light-hearted, enjoyable and brief, aware of the inevitable soon-to-be-arrived-at parting. (She had never permitted any suggestion of continuity.) She had kept a sloppy timetable with Claud, visiting him too often in the loft and lately allowing him to visit her every night in the Old Rectory. She had not toyed with love, not stopped when she still could have without pain.

And above all there had not been enough jokes. Jokes were the essence. Claud took everything seriously, he did not for instance compare well with Clug in that field.

Laura circled out onto the main road and increased speed. She had been in danger of losing her grip, she told herself irritably, and trod hard on the accelerator.

As she drove she savoured her last night with Claud. He had been caring and passionate, he had made love better than ever before, she had been physically and emotionally delighted, their union had been excellently synchronised, she could not fault it.

She had been a little puzzled by this notable success, she remembered now, until Claud, lying spent, his head on her breast, had volunteered that the last difficulty, the last tiny hitch in the composition of his novel was overcome.

‘And what was it?’ She had stroked his throat with her finger. ‘This awful hitch?’

‘My girl’s name, of course,’ he had answered sharply.

‘Oh?’ she had asked sleepy, relaxed, content.

‘May will not do at all.’

‘No?’

‘Her name, of course, is Lydia.’

‘Of course. Excellent.’

‘She still has your legs.’

She had not noticed help was at hand.

Laura, braking carefully, glancing cautiously in her rear mirror, drew into a lay-by and switched off the engine.