“So, Mum, what did he do?”

Prudence was touching her wide, unmade-up mouth, and her daughter knew that her mother was thinking about that first kiss.

But when she spoke, it was to tell her something else, something she had never spoken of before; believing in her superstitious way that the charm of a secret is broken once it is spoken of, even to a loved one.

“When he saw me outside the Lyceum I was a bit flustered—travelling on my own and all that—which I think he understood. I didn’t tell him, but he took my hand and we walked to this jazz club in Soho and on the way he told me he knew I would come because he’d had a dream about me the night before we had met.”

“‘Did he tell you the dream?”

“Yes, but it was the night before the dance at the Lyceum.”

“Before he’d even seen you?”

“That’s what he said. He told me that when he was a boy, they had these trolley-buses that he went everywhere on, and in this dream he was coming home with a gang of his mates when a family got on a trolley; a mother and three daughters, all dishy, who sat at the front of the bus. He and his mates were pretty sharp, but because he had the gift of the gab, he was chosen to go and chat them up. He sat behind them and, being a smart cookie...”

“Which he is.”

“. . . began flattering the mum. The woman was swallowing his line about him and his friends coming to call for tea, when the daughter next to her pointed to him and said to her mum, “Just him, not the others. Only him.”

“And?”

“The girl, the daughter, was me. Well, looked like me.”

“That’s awesome.”

“She wasn’t exactly like me, but similar enough that he recognised me at the dance, the red hair and everything. What was the word he used? Idolised?”

“Idealised?”

“Mm-mm, that’s it—an idealised version of me.”

“How . . . how . . . romantic.”

“Yes. If it’s true.”

Prudence returned to her introspection, and this time Zen didn’t intrude. Her mother was lost in the fond memories of those early years—before the distance she had always felt in Zeno finally surfaced. He had stopped performing or writing songs, and he spent hours—sometimes days—alone, poring over books, books she couldn’t understand: where did he find them?

This avid reading had started while she was still breast-feeding Zen. And then new procedures entered into their life: the Billings ovulation method—where had he come across that? Those embarrassing evening classes he had taken her to, drawing her attention to the mysterious mucus patterns that had changed their lives, made their spontaneous passion a thing of the past, their daughter an only child. She doubted if she could ever have more children, even if she lied to him. She had left it too long. Even though he still shaved and bathed before coming to bed with her, the man she had married was becoming more of a stranger every day.