‘I’ve saved up. I have enough for a month’s rent in digs and I think I can get a job pretty quickly. I’m a decent writer.’

‘You sound like you’ve got it all worked out.’ She wondered how long he’d been planning this. ‘It sounds wonderful,’ she said, hating the sound of her deceit.

Darkness had now clothed them but she’d kept her eye trained on the turning for Leafy Lane. They walked in silence, with only Gyps snorting lightly next to her, and she could feel the words unsaid lying thickly on her tongue and the hurt radiating from him. Eventually, after a long minute without either of them saying another word, she saw the little sign for Howe Farm with a hand pointing up the lane.

‘I’ve got to go,’ she said, ‘I’m late.’ She gave his arm a squeeze and couldn’t help running her hand through his hair. She felt him shiver next to her and, as she must have known he would, he pulled her to him and kissed her on the lips. The kiss felt strangely cool and mechanical. She wondered if he could smell Jack in her hair. She shouldn’t be doing this. Her heart quickened and her groin and legs throbbed, but it was cruel. She pushed him lightly away.

‘I really am going to be late,’ she said, and remounted Gyps.

It was a relief when the lane bent and she could no longer feel his eyes on her back.

*

An RAF plane buzzed above her as she rode home. In school, they had studied the pollination of flowers by bees. The sticky stamen, the blooming petals, was all she could remember. She had a dim idea that as long as none of the white fluid – the pollen – was inside her body it would all be all right. The absolutely essential thing was to keep it out of her.

It was impossible to think about babies. They did not seem connected to the thing she was doing. She could not have a baby. University, she had been going to university, repeating it like a witch’s chant to ward off evil. She was not like the other girls. In the absence of that one key difference she must replace it with something else, some other way of separating herself from her classmates. Unlike them, she was not naïve, like Pam and the others, set on marrying some dolt. When she was younger, she had been certain she would marry Arthur, but that was a long time ago. All of it seemed colourless, vague, someone else’s life. The cabin on the marsh was all there was. Beyond it, she couldn’t think. Even poor Arthur.