This picture of Howard, standing at the stove stirring a pan of scrambled egg, or trudging the streets in the cold and dark, was so persuasive that it made her eyes smart. It struck her as monstrously unfair that Gretchen should be enjoying her freedom and the pleasures of a new lover, while she and Howard, out of some misguided sense of decorum, remained aloof and lonely. Even though she has betrayed him, he won’t betray her, she thought sadly. He would never be—what was the word he had used?—“shabby.”

These melancholy reflections were interrupted by the strains of Coronation Scot heralding the end of Paul Temple. Her mother, drowsy from the heat of the coal fire, opened her eyes, blinked and said, “Very good.” If challenged, she would deny that she had been asleep but would be unable to furnish Jean with any details of the plot.

“Oh, I don’t bother about the story,” she would say. “I just like their voices.”

Jean went out to the kitchen to make her a mug of Allenburys and to smoke her last cigarette of the day, noticing on her way an envelope on the front doormat. It had not been there earlier. She picked it up, her heart clubbing in anticipation as she recognized the neat slanted handwriting and the stiff white envelope that she had recently delivered to Gretchen.

Patience, she thought, laying it aside while she put a match to the stove and measured a mugful of milk and water into a saucepan. Bad news could wait, and good news improved with keeping. She lit her cigarette from the stove and at last sat down at the kitchen table to open her letter:

7 Burdett Road

Sidcup

Dear Jean,

Thank you for your kindness in going to call on Gretchen. She has telephoned me as promised and we are agreed that I will have Margaret on Sundays, and the rest of the week she will stay with her mother in Chelsea. Margaret was naturally a little confused and upset by the new arrangements, but children are resilient creatures and she seems to be bearing up.

The house is very quiet without them and I find myself working later, and sometimes sleeping at the shop to avoid returning to it. Obviously, something must be done in time to address the inequality in our living standards, but Gretchen is in no hurry for any further upheaval and so we proceed as we are for now.

One unfortunate by-product of this unhappy situation, dear Jean, is that a certain awkwardness has crept into our friendship and that I regret more than I can say. I quite understand if you feel uncomfortable in my company now that Gretchen is not around, but I want you to know that in your company I always feel only pleasure and comfort and perfect ease.

In short, I would very much like to see you and wonder if you would be able to meet me for lunch on Saturday in town. There is a decent place near the shop. If you prefer not to meet, there is no need to reply—I will be at the shop all day anyway—but I hope you will think our friendship is sturdy enough to survive a crisis that was not of our making.