London always filled her with such excitement. It was a living, breathing, capricious thing, with all the unpredictability of an errant teen, and she adored the sense of possibility it offered. It flooded her body like a drug, one she’d badly needed after growing up in the Home Counties, where the only possibilities were a Saturday job as a waitress in a cafe followed by a warm white wine in the George & Dragon, thanks to a landlord who turned a blind eye to minors.

But tonight her excitement about her new commission and her best friend’s final show as an usher at the Old Vic was dampened by her still-lurching stomach and a nagging voice in her head telling her: this isn’t food poisoning, and you know it.

The foyer of the Old Vic was packed. Smoke curled up to the ceiling, enveloping the chandelier in a haze, and the room hummed with an energy born of the collective anticipation of hundreds of people. As she weaved her way through the crowd, she was impressed to spot the great actress Sybil Thorndike, still turning heads at ninety-three, while the Chancellor, Denis Healey, stood at the bar talking to another besuited man Sylvia didn’t recognise. She caught Jim’s eye and waved, and the news was out of her almost as soon as she’d reached him.

‘Switzerland?’ Jim leant forward as though he hadn’t heard her properly.

‘Isn’t it exciting?’

‘It’s bloody brilliant, Syl. Roger finally caved to your genius. But what are you writing about, the origins of fondue?’

She slapped him lightly on the arm and smiled. ‘As if.’ She took a drag on her cigarette and blew it out slowly, savouring the moment of revelation. ‘Women’s rights, five years on from national suffrage.’

It wasn’t often she rendered Jim speechless. She put her head back and blew out smoke to the ceiling. ‘Your face is a picture.’

He laughed. ‘I never thought Roger would go for that. Well done, Syl, I’m impressed.’ He held out his glass. ‘To my fabulous fiancée.’

She clinked her gin and tonic against his. ‘Thanks, Jim.’ She knew he meant it.

Thank God Jim wasn’t one of those men who thought his wife’s place was firmly in the kitchen. Sylvia didn’t know how her friend Gilly put up with that. Nor Polly, Oxford-educated but treated like a fashion accessory by Alan, who only seemed proud of her if she wore designer clothes and kept herself in full make-up at all times. Each to their own, Sylvia supposed. She was pretty certain her friends were happy with their husbands, but she never would have chosen such a man herself.