‘She wanted an abortion,’ said Terence pleadingly to Nicky. ‘It was before I met you, she didn’t want to have a baby, she thought it would interfere with her career.’ He heard his own words, grimaced in a pain of his own. ‘But this is all my fault. I should have told everybody everything.’ He quickly poured another whisky.

‘But –’ Nicky stood there in the room but seemed hardly to touch the ground ‘– do you love her?’ The only question that mattered. Still her hands were folded there, over her stomach, but tensely now.

Harry watched as the two women watched Terence. Who looked sadly at Juliet, standing there in the stained dress.

‘I’m so sorry Jules,’ he said, ‘I’ve behaved so stupidly, and I seem to have been cruel but I – truly, it was just that I didn’t want to –’ and he grimaced again, hearing how inadequate his words were ‘– you know how fond I am of you, I didn’t want to hurt you. But I fell in love with Nicky and nothing else seemed important.’ He drained the glass.

‘But we were engaged!’ cried Juliet. And then very suddenly, harshly, she added, ‘You slept with me.’

She stared at Nicky, glittering, pale. ‘He slept with me two weeks ago you know,’ said Juliet. ‘Don’t think you can trust him just because you’ve been through a pathetic little ceremony. You must never, ever, trust him. He doesn’t know the meaning of love.’ Her arms seemed longer than usual, hung beside her thin and white. ‘In my room in York. Everybody knows. Harry knows.’

There was no time for Terence to explain, to say why he had gone to York, that sleeping was all he had done and not much of that as Juliet lay weeping in the bed and he hadn’t the courage to tell her that he was marrying Nicky who was pregnant. For he hadn’t had the courage to tell Nicky he was going to York at all.

Nicky Abbott Blue, married for a week, ran out of the room and out of the house in her white nightdress, they saw her flit past the big front window like a ghost in the darkness, running and running down the crescent.

Terence ran, and Harry ran, out into the freezing night. You take the car Terry, called Harry, as he ran down across the grass.

The car skidded on the newly formed ice, hit Nicky just at the bottom of the hill. She fell on her shoulder and lay quite, quite still.

*

After the ambulance had taken Terence and the unconscious Nicky away, Harry walked numbly, unable to believe what had so quickly happened, back up the hill and into the house.