‘I think,’ she said, collecting up the newspaper when they’d finished eating, putting on the electric jug to make tea, ‘it might be best if you moved out tomorrow.’

Banjo looked slightly bewildered. ‘Well of course,’ he said. ‘I guess that would be best.’

‘Are you going to move in with her?’

He looked at her steadily. ‘I’m going to move in with Pete and Nancy,’ he said, ‘till things settle.’

‘What do you mean, settle?’

Again he looked bewildered. ‘Well you know, I’ll need to move out permanently from here eventually, sort things out with you, money and – and my possessions and things, decide where to live.’

‘Have you already arranged this with them, with Pete and Nancy? Have you already told them?’

‘Yes,’ he said. And it was like a door closing.

‘Take what you need tomorrow morning,’ she said angrily. ‘I’ll send the rest.’

*

In the night, suddenly, urgently, they made love. And Molly, attuned as she always was to every sexual nuance, knew, even as she came in the arms of her love who was leaving her, how in some odd way it was newly exciting to both of them, because it was over. She cried out, and wept. Then I can’t go I suppose echoed in her mind.

In the morning, pale and firm when Banjo would have slept on, she helped him pack the things he would need immediately. ‘Let me know,’ she said, ‘where to send the rest.’

Banjo, pale also and sad-faced, kissed her goodbye, held her in his arms.

‘I didn’t mean it to be as – quickly – as this Molly,’ he said uncertainly. ‘But I’ll phone you darling, we’ll always be good friends, of course we will, we’re a huge part of each other’s lives, perhaps we can go out to dinner next week. ‘ She turned away from him, shuddered at the thought of them politely eating in a restaurant.

He had a green van when he met her. They had laughed because green was her favourite colour.

He packed the green van with some of his belongings and drove away from the big house in Clapham.

*