‘I know, I know, it was just a feeling. They say we – completely replace ourselves in seven years, all our cells, our nails, our hair well I must’ve replaced myself about three times since we split up, except for my teeth.’

‘You don’t replace memory,’ said Harry.

‘I know.’ And Frances smoothed with her hand the pink carpet of her marriage. ‘I think I’ve forgotten. Then out of the blue I dream again.’

‘You don’t understand when you’re young do you?’ said Harry. ‘The past is never quite over, after all.’ (And just once more he saw Juliet Lyall standing there in the white dress and Nicky Abbott like a ghost running across the frosty grass in the darkness.)

‘But perhaps,’ said Frances, ‘it’s only rackety people like us, people who – who don’t have ordered lives. Lots of people probably never think about the past at all.’

‘It’s there though isn’t it?’ said Harry. ‘Waiting for them.’

The silent television pictures flickered. There was only the sound of the old clock, ticking in the warm room.

Then suddenly Harry yawned. ‘Oh sorry, sorry darling, just all that lovely food and drink. And I’ve been working long hours and I’ve only got three days off and a lot of lines to learn. And I didn’t get enough sleep last night.’

‘Out on the tiles?’

‘Yes,’ said Harry, ‘met someone at a club – we went driving, down in the City.’

‘Someone nice?’

‘Good sex,’ said Harry grinning.

‘Sex in the City?’

‘Sex in the City in a Car on Christmas Eve. But actually, I’m really getting too old for sex in cars.’

‘I’m getting too old for sex anywhere.’

‘Franny! Don’t say that. You’re not old.’

‘I’m fifty-seven,’ said Frances calmly, ‘I haven’t had a regular sexual partner since I was about forty. Being a middle-aged woman isn’t like being gay, picking people up and having sex in a car. Or like being a man, marrying someone younger, starting again. You just take what you can get, if you’re a woman my age. I mean think of My Night With Milton,’ and despite herself she giggled in a kind of half-hearted way. ‘And the funny thing was, if only he’d known, it wasn’t really sex I wanted – I liked him, he was kind, I’m really not interested in sex any more, I just liked him, it was a person, to be mine.’

‘I’m yours.’