Jim – wonderful Jim – had supported her career ambitions right from those early days working together on the student paper. Of course, back then it was partly because he wanted to get into her knickers. Most of the men she met at Oxford had seemed to want that; not, she knew, because she was any more attractive than anyone else, but simply because men far outnumbered women and they would take whatever they could get. That was surely why, in her first week at St Hilda’s, they’d been subjected to a lecture by the college chaplain about showing restraint.

She’d wondered at the time if the male freshers had received the same advice.

But unlike the other boys, Jim hadn’t felt the need to bring her down a peg or two simply because she was a woman with the cheek to show ambition. He’d liked her. He’d liked her writing. And it was both of those facts that eventually enabled him to get into her knickers.

She recalled lying in his college bed on a Sunday morning, breath visible in the frigid air, plotting their futures in parallel: they’d both move to London, apply for internships, trainee schemes and junior reporter positions, work hard, get promoted. Everything they wanted was in sync until the issue of children came up. So many heated conversations hashed out under the covers, or picnicking in Christ Church Meadow, or drinking in the Eagle and Child, as she gradually brought broody Jim round to her way of thinking. They’d have children, but only when she was ready: when her career was at a suitable point, when they could afford childcare so she could go back to work. Because she knew, with utter certainty, that if she had a baby too early, her much dreamed about career would diverge from that twin track and go down a different path entirely.

A flash of colour and a familiar hairstyle brought Sylvia out of her thoughts. She stuck out her hand and grabbed Maggie’s arm, pulling her towards them. ‘There you are!’

‘You made it!’ Maggie kissed them both and clapped her hands.

‘Wouldn’t have missed it for the world. You okay? Not too emotional?’ Sylvia could practically see her flatmate’s nervous energy emanating off her. She seemed heightened somehow, as did everything in the room – the laughter shriller than normal, the colours more vivid, the clothes extra glamorous for this special gala performance.

‘A bit. But just wait ’til curtain down and I’ll be bawling.’

‘I’m sure everyone will. It’s the end of an era.’

‘And the start of something,’ Jim said.