She was rich now of course, and it showed, but only in a very stylish manner. Her clothes were Liz Clairbourne or Nicole Farhi or bought in Rome or New York where she went several times a year, but she wore only colours that suited her, rather muted colours, never colours that were there for the fashion. For some years now she had made sure that sleeves were at least three-quarter length, flattering, covering elbows that had begun to show her age. Her shoes were always Italian. Her dark hair was only ever touched by the top stylists or tinters at Vidal Sassoon. Even when she worked in the big garden, or in her antique shop, there was something elegant about her. The only mild eccentricity that didn’t quite fit with all that elegance perhaps was that her Mercedes was pink and nobody could persuade her to change the colour.

And there was that other thing about her, that mask that hid her thoughts.

Still in her blue silk dressing gown, she sat with another cup of coffee under the old oak tree that grew beside their house, staring down at the green, smooth water at the bottom of the garden. Anthony had already sulkily stalked off, early, to pick up a taxi to take him to the reunion; Viola and Benedict were still asleep. Pauline’s face was beautiful and blank, as always. But that sudden pain of memory had dislocated her, and her hand holding the coffee cup shook very slightly.

And her past insinuated itself into her thoughts, drifting there like smoke as she watched a long canal boat gliding into view along the river.

*

One night when she was eighteen (tall and gangling, with the air of a wary colt but already beautiful and, despite her father’s disapproval, about to become a student at the London Academy of Drama) her mother, watching black and white television and drinking her third brandy and ginger ale, suddenly and quite involuntarily cried, ‘My God it’s your father Roger Popham at the back in that Persil advertisement. I thought he was in the circus in France!’

When Pauline turned to her in shock and disbelief, Mrs O’Brien said in amazement, ‘Do you know, I think I’d actually forgotten!’ Seeing her daughter’s face, Mrs O’Brien poured herself her fourth brandy and ginger ale and reluctantly began to relate the story of Pauline’s conception. ‘Oh dear, I hope this isn’t going to upset you,’ she said, ‘your father’s not Ronnie, your father was a queer.’

Slowly, over many more brandies, it was revealed that Pauline was actually the daughter of a man called Roger Popham: a homosexual, an actor and a sometime employee of The Great Zelda Brothers’ Circus.