An absurd lightness of heart fills Alix, as she watches this absurd encounter. She does not really mind if the traffic stops for ever, if she and Brian sit here for ever to the strains of Nilsson and the spectacle of the silent laughter beyond the screen. This is just fine, just fine. No doubt it will be prettier in Queyssac-les-Vignes, in their little rented farmhouse. It will be sunnier, more picturesque than here. Nicholas and Use and Sam and the new baby will visit, and they will feast upon cheeses and grapes and tomatoes and basil and petit pain au chocolat and wine, not upon fish and chips from newspaper parcels. She looks forward to it. But meanwhile, it is just fine right here, with the hoardings advertising Guinness and the Tory Party, with the council blocks with their smart new burglarproof entry phones, with the Roman Catholic primary school and the tandoori takeaway and the new private hospital called after Florence Nightingale, and the Home of the Chesterfield and a shop full of doll’s houses, and a slogan declaring PSYCHIATRY KILLS! This is Good Time, Good Place. In comparison with the Fistula Hospital, this is just dandy. And even the Fistula Hospital wasn’t all that bad. As long as you didn’t have to die in it.

Brian is not quite as resigned to immobility as Alix. He says he is getting hungry. The Thai dinner had been delicious but insubstantial, and Polly Piper was not a breakfast person. He reaches for a mint from the glove pocket. Alix tells him not to worry, Liz always over-caters, and indeed when they finally reach Dresden Road there are still plenty of snacks left, although many of the earlier guests are now a little drunk. Alix furnishes herself with a glass, and goes off in pursuit of Esther, whom she has not seen for more than a year, whom she has not seen since her marriage; and Brian, inevitably, finds himself listening politely as Melvyn Stacey tells him about the anomalies (and in his view iniquities) of the continuing representation of the Khmer Rouge at the United Nations. It is a subject of which Brian knows a little but not much. He is willing to listen. If he gets a chance to speak, he will respond with news of the Vietnamese resettlement project in Northam.

In the kitchen, Jonathan Headleand is kissing Deirdre Kavanagh. The chain of her necklace has broken, and little watery glass leaves and frosted fluted petals and bright white shiny painted stamens shower into the uplifted cups of her brassiere and scatter on the cork-tiled floor.