‘I wanted to teach him how to make love. So many men never learn.’

‘You did that?’ Martin held her hand (it would not be difficult to put a pillow over Claud’s head and hold it there).

‘Yes. Listen, the birds are beginning to sing.’

‘Then what?’ (Better to let the bastard live.)

‘Then I found it was not all talk and sex, he could write. It was so good, I helped him burn the first draft. I got burned myself.’ She held her free hand up and turned it about. ‘There’s a scar somewhere.’

‘There will be.’

‘Then he fell in love with his girl. He truly loves her, she is part of him. He said if he got bad reviews, he would kill himself, suicide threats, tiresome emotional blackmail. Sitting here all night I have been thinking he’s a selfish bastard. It would not matter if he did die. I was so angry I almost wanted him to. I knew he wouldn’t, that he was merely stupefied with whisky and there was Lydia absolutely alive and perfectly sober.’

‘Were you perhaps feeling guilty for seducing him?’

‘No! We had a lovely time. How could I feel guilty about that? Wishing him dead, which I did for other reasons, is betrayal, though.’

‘I wish,’ said Martin, ‘that you would give me the chance of betraying you.’

Laura looked astonished. ‘Why?’

‘You haven’t taken in a word I said,’ Martin yelled. ‘I love you, I want you. I want to stop you wasting yourself on this ass.’ He glanced contemptuously over his shoulder at Claud.

‘But I have,’ said Laura. ‘I thought that was obvious. All I have had this night is a small hiccup of responsibility.’

‘I thought you were torn in two.’

‘It isn’t being torn in two that matters, it’s being shredded into little pieces so that you can never get back together, that matters.’

‘And you are back together?’

‘Yes. I am.’ She seemed wonderfully calm now, cheerful.

‘What about me? Give me a chance to love and betray,’ (or play the clown) ‘please.’

‘No chance. I am getting off your train.’ She was friendly, cheerful, composed. Perhaps he had not seen her weep? She was slipping away from him, he had never held her. ‘Listen to the birds,’ she said. ‘It’s time for me to be off.’

‘God! I feel awful! Woeful, oh,’ cried Claud. ‘Ouch! I feel terrible.’

Laura leaned over Claud. Suddenly exasperated, she said: ‘I bet you do. Listen to this, Claud. You have written a bloody good book, stop whingeing about one idiotic review and get on with the next. Tear up what you have written so far. Got that?’

Claud nodded and, since nodding hurt his head, groaned.