‘I know,’ said Molly quietly, and if she had been looking up she would have seen a gleam of triumph in his eyes but she was sitting with her hands tightly together looking at the floor. ‘Tony it’ll never be like that with anyone else, but you’re talking about sex, I’m happy now with Banjo in all sorts of different ways, I’d never be unfaithful, I love him in a completely different way than I loved you.’

‘But the sex isn’t as good is it?’ He was leaning towards her urgently and she could see the bulge in his trousers, ‘and the thing is, something’s happened, I’ve only just found out, I think I may be able to arrange for us to work together again, something big. You know how well we work together, this is the chance of a lifetime, and it’ll be like before. It’ll be just like before, like it was in Birmingham.’ He was breathing fast. Molly stared at him, felt the old familiar sexual feelings come back so strongly that she could hardly breathe, clenched and unclenched her hands, didn’t speak – and that is how Pauline found them when she opened the study door looking for Anthony, running up the stairs to tell him about Joseph’s conversation, and about her father: not in each other’s arms but in a room where the tension and sex could have almost been touched. She turned at once and walked away.

‘No, no Pauly,’ called Molly jumping up at once, her cheeks suddenly crimson, and Anthony got up also, swore under his breath. Molly ran along the passage and down the stairs, but Pauline had disappeared. She had quietly gone into one of the spare bedrooms and locked the door. She might have wept, or raged perhaps but she didn’t do either of those things because her mother was passed out on the double bed, a glass lying on the floor beside her, a trickle of brandy on the light cream rug.

Pauline sat beside her mother and held the old wrinkled hand in hers, for comfort.

*

Down in the garden the noise was even louder as people got drunker and drunker. One of the shy but cocky young men had vomited into the Thames and Viola, ashamed of her classmate in all this glittering crowd, was wiping frantically at his waistcoat with a serviette. Banjo and Chris got up to help her, saw how upset she was.

‘Don’t be cross with him,’ said Banjo amiably, ‘he was probably nervous having to meet all those people, I know I would be if I was an actor.’

‘Aren’t you an actor?’ said Viola curiously, looking at Banjo’s face, feeling that she knew him, letting go of her classmate at last, leaving him to wander unsteadily up the lawn.

‘God no, me and Chris are musicians. I’m Molly McKenzie’s – um – partner.’