At least, that’s what she’d been asking herself when she dared think about it. She’d managed, fairly successfully, to keep the thing caged in some far corner of her mind throughout her trip to Switzerland, but on the plane home, and the long taxi ride back to Clapham, she’d been unable to keep it from wrestling its way forward. There’d been a young mother on the plane with a screaming toddler, of course. An apologetic smile on her face. Tears in her eyes when a businessman pointedly asked to move seats.

How? Well, she supposed it didn’t matter now. But she still wanted to know. She remembered going to a family planning clinic in her first year of university and the lecture the doctor gave her when she requested a prescription; her refusal to cower with humiliation when he asked if she was married, even though the pill had been perfectly legal for unmarried women since 1967. She didn’t care that the conservative media said it turned girls like her into promiscuous harlots. For her it was about freedom and control. It was a way to protect herself, to keep her life exactly as she wanted it, until she and Jim decided otherwise. A way to stop herself turning into Gilly, married at eighteen, with three children by the time she turned twenty-four.

How long had it been since Gilly’s wedding? Nearly six years, she supposed, the autumn of the year they finished school. Six whole years since they all lay sprawled on the grass outside the assembly hall the afternoon of their final A Level exams. Sylvia still recalled the sense of freedom that welled up in her chest back then. It returned to her every time she smelled cut grass and spring blossom in the air – or heard Let It Be on the radio, because it was the end of something for John, Paul, George and Ringo then too, back in 1970.

‘I reckon you’ll marry a lumberjack.’

‘What?’ Fiona had propped herself up on her elbow and squinted at Gilly.

‘I think you’re going to marry a lumberjack – or someone like that – and live in the woods.’

Fiona laughed. ‘That’s the future you have mapped out for me? Gee, thanks.’ She punched Gilly lightly on the arm and lay back on the grass, staring up at the sky. ‘It’s scary, isn’t it?’

‘What, the prospect of marrying a lumberjack? I should say so,’ Maggie said.

‘No, silly! The future, I mean. What’s going to happen next. We’ve got our whole lives ahead of us and no clue where we’ll end up. I think it’s scary.’

‘It’s exciting, more like,’ Sylvia said. ‘We can finally do anything we want.’

‘You really think so?’

She shrugged. ‘Well, you can try at least. Why not dream big?’

‘It’s all right for you,’ Gilly said. ‘You’re clever. You’re going to Oxford.’