I knew that there were women whom Syl visited. I had overheard snatches of phone calls. He had recourse to them when he had no regular girl in his life. I was irrationally sure that he had gone to one of them. Fearing the ties of marriage, the end of freedom, the anchor of domesticity, my son had gone to a whore.

‘Hell,’ I said, startling dog, for I had shouted. It was insane that I, at my age, should be concerned with the private life of Syl, at his age. If you shared a house with someone—no matter who—you become involved in his movements, his comings and goings, his tardiness, his moods.

‘God, dog,’ I said, ‘I’m tired.’ The grave presented itself as a most desirable property.

Syl came home as dawn was breaking. I turned my bedside light off and lay down for a while. It was the eve of the wedding. I looked back to my own wedding and found I remembered little about it except that I had felt, on the one hand, bilious and, on the other, determined. Rather, I supposed, as the troops had felt facing the carnage of the trenches. Warfare was one symptom of the insanity of man, and marriage was another. Only a flawed species would indulge in wholesale self- destruction, and only an insecure and uncertain species would have hit on the idea of bonding pairs of its incompatible members together for life as a means of stabilizing society. Musing thus bitterly I. got up and dressed. I no longer believed that the wedding would be abandoned. It was too late. I spent the day pottering about, tidying up and making my own tea since Mrs Raffald was engaged at The Oaks, helping to put everything in readiness.

In the evening I put on my green dress, and Syl and I walked along the road to the pre-wedding festivities. The lights were on in every room and the front door stood ajar. Monica was being particularly grande dame and welcomed us with more formality, combined with an assumed warmth, than was natural. She kissed my cheek and led me into the drawing-room to meet the other guests.

This fell a little flat, for Cynthia and her children were the only people present whom I hadn’t met before. I had brought dog along under my coat, thinking he might ease the awkwardnesses should the children be shy, but they were shyer of dog than anyone. They backed away from him and clung to their mother. She, I concluded, would not permit them to approach any animal for fear of germs, or perhaps rabies.

‘Go on, stroke him,’ I said to the little girl, but she shook her head and cowered away.