“I think you’re crazy.”

“Yes, I am.”

“Kate?”

“Yes?”

“Don’t go and invite him to our party, will you?”

“No, I’ll try not to.”

“And don’t invite Irene, either, come to that.”

Kate and Evelyn stared at one another, Kate toyed with the idea of pulling another sheepish helpless face, abandoned it, stared on, and then said, “You’re paid, dear girl, paid by the hour. That’s the only difference. You’re as bad as I am. But I do agree, no Irene.”

“Just try, for my sake. Think of me, and keep your mouth shut.”

“I promise. I promise.”

“Do you think,” asked Evelyn, “really, seriously think that life is very different for men?”

Kate stood still and thought, apparently earnestly, and then said, shaking her head, without any flippancy at all, and no facial expression whatsoever: “I don’t know. The truth is, I do not know.”

“No,” said Evelyn. “After all these years of thinking about it, neither do I.”

They looked at one another soberly, and sighed.

“I must go and see my Eurocrat,” said Kate. “What a bore.”

“Is he one of those men who tell you what you really need in life is a strong man? ”

“Not yet. Not yet. But he will be. He will be.”

And they smiled again at one another, a smile of complicity. No wonder men find women so irritating these days.

When Kate had gone, tripping off into the dangerous outside world, Evelyn indulged in a little chat with her three neighbours about such interesting female subjects as previous operations, children and grandchildren, and whether they would actually get, this evening, what they had ordered for supper, then abstracted herself and tried to read. It was hard to concentrate, she found, and the glossy laminated novels that people had brought to cheer her didn’t seem very relevant to anything, in here, though she had always supposed it would be pleasant to have time to read. (And eyes to read with, thank God.) So she turned to Isobel’s offering. Isobel, true to form, and to her desire to improve Evelyn, had brought a new collection of Emily Dickinson. Well, at least the poems were short. Turning the pages, her eyes fell on a couple of stanzas, attracted no doubt by one word in them, and remembering Hugo. She read them, and reread them.

Those—dying then,

Knew where they went—

They went to God’s Right Hand—

That Hand is amputated now And God cannot be found—

The abdication of Belief Makes the Behavior small—

Better an ignis fatuus

Than no illume at all—