I decided to ask her to the power station dance. I’d been visiting her for at least a month, but I wasn’t sure if she would be ready to say yes. Our conversations had been about my plans for a garden, her father’s roses, the forthcoming library extension, the books Kathryn liked to read. She would recommend things to me but I didn’t take them out as I knew novels weren’t my thing. Once I had The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy in my hand all the way up to the counter, thinking it would make her smile and nod if she stamped it for me. But at the last minute I deposited it on the trolley. I knew I’d never read it, which would mean I’d have to lie to her when she asked me.

So there had never been any mention of anything personal. I had not questioned her about her dead husband. She had not enquired if I was courting any girl.

On the day I decided I would ask her, I spent the bus journey from Calcot to Darvington forming different ways of putting my question.

Would you care to join me at the power station dance? I asked the trees that hung over the river.

There’s a dance on Saturday night. Do you fancy it? I asked the bus stop just after Darvington Bridge.

Want to join me at the dance on Saturday? I asked the posters in the Co-op window.

Should I just go straight to the desk and come out with it, leaning urgently on the counter? Kathryn. I want you to come to the dance with me.

Or wait until she was alone in the literature section and spend half an hour building up to the subject? Perhaps there would be some novel I could enquire about that had a big dance scene in it. Something like Jane Austen. Not that a power station dance would be anything like that.

Or perhaps I should start with a compliment.

You look like you’d enjoy a good dance.

No, that sounded slightly obscene. That was what some of the men at work would be saying to their women down the Barley Mow. You look like you’d enjoy a dance love. And the rest.

By the time I arrived in the warmth of the library, my mind was blank. I couldn’t see Kathryn anywhere. I even went upstairs to the reference section. The man with the four carrier bags was thundering through the card catalogue. But Kathryn was nowhere to be seen.

I walked slowly down the stairs, listening for the click-clack of her heels. And as I reached the final step, her voice was suddenly there.

‘Howard. Hello.’ She was stroking the spines of the books on her trolley. ‘Isn’t there a dance at the power station on Saturday?’ she said.

So later that evening I probably came in whistling.

‘I’m beginning to think you’ve got a fancy woman,’ said Mum.

Nothing else was said until the Saturday morning before the dance. Every other Saturday I would take Mum to the covered market in Oxford to buy what she called ‘some real meat’. She didn’t trust Hughes’s in Darvington. ‘It’s too cheap,’ she said. ‘And it’s all wrapped up, ready. I don’t trust that. You don’t know what it is. I want to see it on the counter. I want to see him cut into it.’