If Evelyn felt slight misgivings as Ted and Kate greeted one another by telling one another how much they had heard about each other, with a challenging look in both pairs of bright-blue eyes, she concealed them. Ted had on occasion expressed irritation at some of Kate’s relayed views, but he had also expressed curiosity, and had actually been seen reading some of her current series in the TV Times (Kate had some strange outlets); and anyway, Kate was perfectly capable of looking after herself in conversation, as in most other ways. If anything, she enjoyed a skirmish. Kate, for her part, was thoroughly looking forward to her evening; Stuart was baby-sitting, so in theory at least she wouldn’t have to hurry back, the spring sun was pouring through the windows onto the pale-gold wooden floor and the stripped pine of the dresser and the blue bowl of orange marigolds and marguerites, it would be a good dinner because Evelyn’s oven, unlike her own, was not bought from a junk shop and standing on a slant, the drink that Ted had poured for her was substantial, and she was delighted to find Hugo Mainwaring, one of her favourite recent acquaintances, who treated her with an asexual teasing gallantry that made her feel extremely buoyant. Life, thought Kate, is fun. After all. Or at least, bits of it are. The trees in the square outside were full of new green leaves. What could go wrong?

Her sense of well-being was slightly disturbed by the arrival of the Swede and his wife. The Swede, they silently and unanimously decided, was all right, but his wife, whom neither Ted nor Evelyn had met before, was not at all all right. She arrived looking strained and obscurely agitated, perhaps, they speculated, because she was overdressed; the other women were wearing long skirts and nondescript shirts, but Mrs. Sondersheim was clad in a smart little olive-green jersey silk dress, very low cut, the kind of dress that Kate as a girl in Romley had thought she would like to wear when she was grown up, but which she now recognised was quite beyond her. She was also wearing jewelry, something which Evelyn never did on principle, and Kate because she hadn’t any. She was lean and handsome and tanned and very carefully—probably (but who could tell?) unnecessarily-made up. A gin and tonic did little to relax her; Hugo did his best to chat her up about life in Brussels, but got short change. Her replies were short, edgy, evasive. Evelyn hoped that a removal to the dinner table and a portion of mushroom salad might calm her nerves, but no such transformation occurred. She continued to sit erect, taut and silent, toying with her salad in a way that Kate and Evelyn, both healthy eaters just old enough to know that weight was going to be a problem if they didn’t watch it, found infuriating. So by a general consensus the party, as it were, metaphorically turned its back on her and talked among themselves. The Swede aired his views on the justification for testing new contraceptive drugs in the Third World, Ted contributed an account of the economics of curing river blindness, Kate as expected asked bright and intelligent questions on both topics, Evelyn worried about the broccoli and hollandaise sauce, and Hugo wished that the emanations from Mrs. Sondersheim would fade, and tried to engage a distracted Evelyn in a diversionary chat about landscape gardening.