“No, Viola’s gone off him recently. Her fiancé came up last weekend, he’s finished work on that film, whatever it’s called, that epic thing in Greece, and she’s gone right off Neville. Sophy’s bloody quick off the mark, I’ll say that for her; she may not be an intellectual giant in other respects, but she can smell a change of heart from a mile away.”

“Do you think she’d have a nice time with Neville?”

“I don’t see why not. I like him, don’t you? I say, Emma, talking about epic films, do you know who wrote to me this morning? Rockie Goldenberg. They’re doing some great sea thing in the East Indies, some story by Smollett, he said, and he wondered if I’d be interested in it. How would you like to go to the East Indies? It would make a change, wouldn’t it?”

“I should think it’s just like Hereford,” I said, and started to laugh.

“Oh God, you’re crazy,” he said, and began to kiss my arm, and I lay there laughing and sneezing and saying, “I love you, David,” for quite a long time, not particularly because I meant it or felt it, but because I knew that in view of the facts, it must be true. When I stopped, he said:

“What’s so funny about the East Indies?” and I said:

“We’d all have to have injections; think of poor old Flora and Joseph, full of needles,” but already my imagination was at work, I had packed our bags and written to the estate agents in Hong Kong, and I knew so well that David had done the same. We were cheered by the promise of this grand excursion as Flora is cheered after a fall by the offer of a sweet or a go on the swings. We had too much in common by now, David and I, ever to escape.