She stared out again across their long garden. ‘No, I’m not coming, I need to be at the shop for a while and there’s eight for dinner tonight. Try and remember we’ve got guests, don’t get too tired and emotional at the reunion just because you’ve got a Saturday night off for once.’ And then she added placatingly because she knew he really did hate arriving at things by himself, and because he was her husband, and because, of course, she loved him, ‘Come and have your coffee darling.’

Anthony did not deign to answer. Hung up his telephone loudly.

Pauline Bonham stood quite still in the kitchen in her beautiful blue dressing gown. There was something odd about the way her eyes hooded for a moment as she stared at the river. Then she shook herself slightly, as if warding off a dream.

*

On Saturday mornings a street market was held quite near Molly McKenzie’s big old Victorian house in Clapham; often she’d be woken by the sounds of vans unloading flowers or pumpkins or scented candles or cane furniture or mini-skirts. Once, as if she awoke and found herself on some urban farm, there had been the sound of hens and chickens squawking, brought along by a Jamaican with a hatchet; this stall had soon been closed down after complaints about blood and feathers. Molly walked through the Saturday market at her peril: Louise people would shout Hey, hey Louise. At first she had rather enjoyed it; later she could not bear the fact that she couldn’t go anywhere unrecognised. She was not sure that the people who called at her knew she was a real person.

This Saturday morning, hearing the market sounds, Molly extricated herself expertly from Banjo’s tight grasp. It was so hot, the sheets were damp, their bodies were damp. She had got quite adept at pulling herself out of his embrace without waking him, moving to the space on the other side of the bed, stretching her limbs, freeing herself. But she always left a hand or a foot just touching, so that she knew that he was there.

She opened her eyes now and, to her surprise, saw a ray of blazing sunlight falling through a gap in the curtains and across the brightly coloured duvet on the big double bed. She leant across to the clock on the bedside table and looked at the time. God it was nearly ten o’clock. Not that she really wanted to go to a bloody class reunion after all this time, what unemployed actress in her right mind would want to go anywhere where there’d be a lot of other actors whose first question was invariably, casually: Working darling? Still the same old question after thirty-six years. Thirty-six years since she’d arrived at Euston Station with two suitcases, carrying her life carefully in her hands.