‘Did you have a good time?’ I had asked Syl when I saw him at breakfast on the Monday morning.

‘Splendid,’ said Syl. ‘I put a brace of pheasants in the larder.’

‘Did Margaret enjoy herself?’ I asked.

Syl was eating a boiled egg and looked for a second as though he’d forgotten who she was. ‘Oh yes,’ he said, through a mouthful of toast, ‘she had a splendid time.’

I sipped lukewarm tea while I waited for him to go to work. He’d promised to pluck the pheasants so I hung them even further out of the reach of the dog who had sneaked into the larder and was looking up at them like a poet at the stars. How ridiculous that I should remember that so well.

Lili had left a cigarette packet on the window-seat. I found it in the morning as I sat drinking tea and watching the birds. There were two cigarettes in it and on a whim I went and got a match from the kitchen, came back, sat down and lit one.

It was years since I’d given up smoking. I had stopped when I was expecting my first child—not for reasons of health or morality, but because it made me sick. The child, a girl, had died in infancy and when they told me she was dead I had said, ‘Give me a cigarette.’

Infancy: the word is like a little diaphanous shroud to cover up the unbearable. She had been five days old. They came to me and they said, ‘Mrs Carter...’ (I had assumed the name. This was before I had married Jack. The child was illegitimate.) They said: ‘The child was too small to live. She never really had a chance...’ I drew on my cigarette and said: ‘Surely she was a little young to die.’ The doctor held my shoulder briefly, and then left without saying anything. The nurse fussed about for a while doing what nurses do, not saying anything either. I think she was humming a little tune under her breath. They were both afraid of me, but they need not have been. I lay and looked at the ceiling and smoked and promised myself that nothing should ever hurt like this again. I didn’t cry or rant or do anything much except arrange for the baby to be properly buried in her own baby grave. There were just the priest and me there on a watery spring morning, and all I can remember feeling was disbelief and a desperate yearning for it to end, so that I could smoke. It was soon over. I sat on a gravestone and smoked and smoked, my hand shielding the cigarette until it was possible no longer with the rain pouring down my face.