I thought—it isn’t just me. Nobody likes Syl. I’m marrying a man whom nobody likes. I could see the room beginning to spin as though I had had a dreadful shock or a moment of unbearable fear. That I myself did not like Syl was almost immaterial, since I deserved nothing better, but even with my penitential self-disgust it seemed unfair to me, and otiose, that my future husband should be so generally unpopular. With a glimmer of self-preservation I began to reason that to be a martyr to an unwanted marriage was one thing, whereas to look like a fool in the eyes of all the world was another. Then I suddenly saw that Syl, too, must look a very great fool, for he was twice my age and I wasn’t beautiful, nor talented, nor in the least degree interesting. We were, I suddenly perceived, an entirely incongruous and idiotic couple. I thought that he was already a man when I was born, that he had seen me growing up, and I thought of the strange, sad, frightening creatures who haunted the borders of the woods watching the children play.

‘Oh Lili,’ I said, and I grasped the table’s edge.

Her expression, to my fearful eyes, was enigmatic. It might have been compassionate, or amused, or even hostile.

She lit a cigarette, and when she spoke her tone was cool. ‘Sometimes there are things you have to do,’ she said, ‘and sometimes there aren’t. Sometimes other people can make up your mind for you and sometimes they can’t. Sometimes you have to grow up not just once but all through your life. Even very old people sometimes have to suddenly grow up a bit.’

I didn’t really understand what she was saying, but I could see that she despised me.

‘You think I’m stupid,’ I said.

‘No I don’t,’ said Lili. ‘I think you’ve lost hope, and the only thing I can tell you is that if you hang on hope will come back, and you mustn’t do anything until it does.’

My wedding was close. Would hope return in time?

‘I’ve got to go through with it now,’ I said.

‘Oh well,’ said Lili.

She seemed again to have lost interest, in that swift way she had, and I felt useless and bereft.

‘Tired,’ said Lili. ‘Bed.’

The next day was Saturday, and Syl called in the middle of the morning. He had been playing golf and was wearing cavalry-twill trousers and a plaid tie round an unbuttoned shirt-neck.

‘How boyish and negligent you look,’ cried Lili.

She reminded me of a wasp as she flitted round him, a wasp suddenly aware, in the way wasps have, that there is rotting matter in the vicinity, for she had been upstairs when he arrived by way of the garden and couldn’t have seen him.

‘I’ve been noticing how very much roof you have,’ she said to my mother. ‘I’ve never known a house with so much roof: In places it almost comes down to the ground.’