‘Oh, the Lawrences? … Well, I expect it will be very nice for you all to spend your last evening together. Are you really going the day after tomorrow?’

‘Yes. So’s Ronald, isn’t he?’

‘He is indeed,’ sighed Ronald’s mother. ‘How time does seem to have slipped away from us all … Mr Milton and Ronald, you know, are hoping to travel together … Poor Mr Milton …! ’

‘Yes,’ said Sydney, ‘I suppose he is a good deal laughed at.’

Mrs Kerr glanced at her with raised eyebrows a moment and bit her lip as though she had winced for a moment inwardly. There seemed to be depths of crudeness here that she dared not fathom. ‘Not as far as I know, my dear,’ she said gently, ‘unless, of course, you feel able to laugh at him?’

‘I’m not much amused really. Do I seem to be much amused?’

Mrs Kerr looked at her gently and critically. ‘No, I don’t think you do. You do look older, my dear, yes, you certainly have developed. I suppose there is nothing like buying experience that somebody else pays for.’

‘You’re very sensitive to all this,’ said Sydney, raising her eyes for the first time. ‘What’s most beautiful about you is your sensitiveness. If there’s one thing one might hope to learn from you it would be to be sickened and turned cold by cruelty and unfairness. I hope that’s what other people have learnt from you. I hope that’s what someone where you’re going next will be able to learn, too.’ Finding that her voice was still steady and clear and that she was able to go on she concluded: I am very grateful to you; you have done a great deal for me.’

After a moment’s pause Mrs Kerr said, with a glance through the curtains, ‘You do remember, don’t you, that Ronald’s on the balcony?’

‘No, I haven’t forgotten Ronald … Good night, Mrs Kerr. Good night, Ronald!’

She turned and went back to the door, not quite directly, steering her way through the furniture as though she were carefully following back a chalk line drawn for her on the floor. While her hand was still on the door Mrs Kerr exclaimed, ‘Sydney!’ incredulously, then later, ‘Well, Sydney – what have I done?’ Sydney did pause on the threshold and look back uncertainly, Mrs Kerr held out a hand; then she turned again and went out, shutting the door behind her so quietly that Mrs Kerr and Ronald only heard the latch click. Mrs Kerr, catching her breath at the sound of the latch, began repeating her name again in such a tone of desolation and loneliness that Ronald, driven out against something intolerable, rushed through the curtains.

‘Why, mother!’

‘Make her come back. Go after her, Ronald, and make her come back – I have something to say to her.’

‘I don’t see that I very well can.’