As Anthony stood up to leave while the others were still eating the peach pie, he said, very crossly, ‘How did you two meet?’

‘When we were first planning our fringe show,’ said Viola, her face animated with love. ‘Well I’ve told you Daddy, it’s Look Back in Anger but us looking back at it, there’s music and movement as well as acting, well, we realised we needed some really really special music and we racked our brains about who could help us and then I remembered Banjo and I knew I could find him at Auntie—’ She stopped abruptly, just for a second.

The silence in the room was absolute. Viola recovered first. ‘He’s doing it wonderfully,’ she continued finally, smiling at Banjo. ‘You should see what a saxophone and a computer can do together,’ so that Molly McKenzie, hovering there in all their minds as they sat there around the table, only hovered still, was not actually mentioned, at the Bonham family’s last Sunday lunch.

Anthony was gone, slamming the front door; Benedict, suddenly voluble, pleaded with Banjo to come to look at Jeremy’s computers just for twenty minutes, cyberpunk man that’s what we’re interested in, they had an electric guitar there, they could show Banjo what they were doing. Banjo smiled, kissed Viola’s hair only twenty minutes and was gone. So that Pauline and Viola sat alone at the table, the remains of the Sunday lunch everywhere about them.

‘I love him Mum,’ said Viola. ‘I’ve never felt like this in my life before.’

‘He’s – he seems a very nice person,’ said Pauline slowly. ‘But I – hope you’ll take time to get to know him properly.’

‘We’re going to get married.’

Pauline, for a moment thinking only of Viola, tried to tread carefully around her daughter’s dreams.

‘Darling – there’s plenty of time. Perhaps you could live together first, see how things go.’ (Oh how things have changed, she thought, since I had to get married.)

‘He wants to get married now, have children.’

‘Viola, darling, remember what happened to me,’ Pauline said urgently. ‘You’re only just starting out on the most difficult career in the world; this profession needs all of your energy if you are to survive.’

‘I can start out with Banjo just as well as starting out on my own.’

‘Not if you have children.’

‘Banjo will share looking after them.’

‘It doesn’t work like that, you think it will but it won’t.’

‘It will with Banjo,’ said Viola serenely. ‘You can’t compare him to Dad. He’s a different generation and they see things differently, you’ll see, we’re going to do lots of work together.’ She chattered away about their plans.

Finally Pauline could not help herself. ‘What does Molly say? What does she feel about all this?’ And casually, ‘Was it her decision, breaking with Banjo, or was it his?’