Isabel smooths her skirt at her hip – a habit born years ago – and takes a steadying breath. The silk velvet of her old evening gown reassures her. Although forty-seven, she is still considered a handsome woman, and this particular gown suits her figure well. She straightens her back and walks towards the drawing room. The dreadful smell of stale cigarettes has been carried away and replaced by the more pleasing odours of dinner coming from the kitchen.

Roast beef, because dear Ralph is coming.

Harriet changes into a dark blue dress, something more suited to an evening than the utilitarian grey flannel skirt of the office. She washes her hands and face and unpins her hair.

She doesn’t smoke at work. The men don’t offer, and she has never asked, so it seems unfair that her clothes should smell so terribly.

She could do with a cigarette now.

She opens her silk-lined jewellery box and picks out a favourite pair of earrings and a necklace.

The diamonds on her finger sparkle in the light. The central diamond is a substantial stone, and she knows that the ring cost the earth. Ralph proposed to her not long after her twenty-first birthday, and she had felt so very grown up when he put the ring on her finger. He told her that she could look at it whenever they were apart and know that something of him was with her. ‘Almost all my wordly goods you’re wearing,’ he had joked, ‘but not quite.’ And then he had kissed her rather fulsomely, as if he had been trying to possess her.

She dabs herself with a light perfume and rakes her fingers through her hair. She lifts it up under her chin, considering herself in the mirror, before tidying it into a suitable style for the evening. A strand of hair becomes caught under one of the diamond’s claws and is torn from her scalp.

‘Do you think I should cut my hair?’

Gerald Littlemore is pouring sherry. He turns to regard his daughter, pausing briefly, decanter in hand, before filling her glass.

‘It’s perfectly acceptable as it is,’ he says, handing over the drink. ‘Why on earth would you want to cut it?’ He rubs a finger over his thick moustache, perplexed by her question.

‘I was asking Ralph, I think, Daddy.’