Their children Viola and Benedict were still asleep of course; nothing would wake them on a Saturday morning till at least midday. Usually their bedroom doors were shut tight on their secrets but today all the windows and doors were open, trying to catch some other breeze. Benedict lay wrapped in a sheet, surrounded by computers, monitors, printers, and paper all over the floor. Viola’s room was even more untidy, if that were possible: short skirts and jeans and bright dresses and infinitesimally small items of underwear lying everywhere, and every conceivable kind of make-up piled up on the dressing table. She slept on her stomach and her long dark hair spread across the pillows.

Pauline made a pot of coffee and unlocked the French windows that opened all along the house on to the garden. For a moment she drifted out on to the lawn, looking at the trees and the river, catching the fragrant scent of the roses. I have measured out my life with coffee spoons, she murmured conversationally to the bright morning

The telephone rang in the large kitchen.

It was their eldest daughter, Portia, and the voices of the two women crackled with restrained antagonism, as they almost always did.

‘I want Daddy to get me two free tickets to Othello at Stratford on Tuesday night; I want to see it again and bring a friend.’

‘Actors don’t get free tickets Portia,’ said Pauline, ‘you know that.’ Thinking: you’re a well-paid public relations consultant; you can afford to pay for theatre tickets.

‘I bet he gets them at cut price at least, he’s a Star, the reviews say it’s the greatest Iago ever.’

‘Hello, hello, is it for me?’ said Anthony’s voice on the bedroom extension.

‘Oh Daddy darling,’ said Portia.

Pauline left them to it.

There was another mirror in the kitchen. Pauline stared at herself.

Everyone said she was beautiful, even now. Her short, dark hair framed her pale, oval face, her dark eyes gave nothing away, even though she was alone in the empty kitchen. She had long ago perfected the art of presenting her face as a beautiful mask that hid her heart.

The kitchen extension of the phone buzzed and she picked it up.

‘Oh come on, come to the reunion Pauly,’ said Anthony from the bedroom telephone. ‘You know I hate going by myself.’

For a moment Pauline was silent. The aroma of fresh coffee filled the sunny kitchen. And then a swift, abrupt pain of memory, and of loss, caught at her heart so absolutely unexpectedly that she actually gasped.

Anthony, looking at his hair with such concentration in the bedroom mirror, did not notice. ‘Will you come Pauly?’ he said again.

Finally his wife said, ‘It was all so long ago.’

‘It’ll be interesting,’ Anthony insisted.