‘I expect he decided not to come back to England,’ said Mrs O’Brien, sitting back at last, drinking her brandy with relief. ‘With the circus, I mean. He might have thought it was dangerous still, and he was probably right – look at the Profumo case and Stephen Ward and that lot, it’s still not safe for queers in England. Why should he go through all that again?’

Her daughter sat pale and silent, staring at nothing.

Mrs O’Brien sighed, sat forward in the wooden chair again and spoke quietly, first flicking her eyes round the pub. ‘Listen Pauline. You wanted to go through with this, not me. I told you about him. I told you he was a queer. I didn’t really want to tell you all the rest; you young people think sex is all love and stuff. Do you know anything about queers?’

‘Of course I do.’

‘Do you know anything about them?’

‘Like what?’ said Pauline defensively, thinking of Harry Donaldson from her class at the Academy. His classmates from the class of ’59 whispered about him, thought he was probably a queer but they liked him, no one disliked him. ‘I know one,’ she said. ‘I know all about that.’