‘Where were you?’ she said to Terence sorrowfully. ‘I’ve been to nearly every pub in York looking for you,’ and Terence, not looking at Harry, weakly patted her arm in apology, bought more drinks, stayed in the bar drinking heavily when the others went off to appear in this fortnight’s play Widowers’ Houses. He flew back to Scotland with his mission still unaccomplished first thing next morning, having lain in an uneasy sleep beside Juliet who sometimes clung to him weeping but who also literally could not bear to feel his body that had given her such pleasure, and then such pain, next to hers: a kind of sad schizophrenia.

And so it turned out that only Harry Donaldson knew that Terence Blue and Nicola Abbott got quietly married the next Saturday morning.

‘Be our witness at the Pimlico register office,’ said Terence on the telephone to York from Aberdeen. ‘We want it to be you, there’s a night train after your show and we’ll whiz up from our new house in Brighton and get married at ten so you can get back for your matinée, I checked the trains.’

‘For fuck’s sake Terry,’ said Harry, ‘what about Juliet? You’re still engaged to her. How can you do this?’

‘Listen,’ said Terence, ‘we’ve got to get married quickly, obviously we do, you haven’t met my father, she’s nearly three months pregnant, we’ve got to do it this weekend when I get back from Scotland. But I’ve got four days off in three weeks’ time, I’ll come and see Juliet then.’ Then added with a flash of twenty-four-year-old self-knowledge, ‘I know I seem to be behaving like a shit but I’m not a shit you know. I’m in love with Nicky, I’ve never been in love before, it makes things absolutely different. I know it seems a bit of a mess now but I know somehow that when it’s all cut and dried and irreversible, I’ll be able to tell my parents too. I’ll be able to explain everything properly to Juliet, Nicky, my parents, everybody. You’ll see Harry, by the end of the month it’ll be all sorted out.’ And then he said an odd, old-fashioned thing. ‘Harry I give you my word.’