‘If you don’t walk back with me quietly, I’ll wring it off,’ said Miss Ellison between her teeth. ‘And make one sound, just one sound to draw attention, and you’ll be where you should have been months ago, in a Home!’ She had seen two people approaching from behind Miss Mayfield. For their benefit, as they passed, she said in a different voice, ‘It’s too far for you; you should have asked me.’ The words ‘in a Home’ had hit Miss Mayfield like a blow. They chimed with a secret fear which sometimes came to her if she woke in the night: the fear that, off and on since leaving Africa, she had been mentally unstable; that she was, at the moment, enjoying a lucid interval. She could almost always reason herself out of that fear, reminding herself that she had had an accident; that until it occurred she had been employed as a teacher, a profession in which lunatics were unwelcome; that she didn’t look like a lunatic . . . but the fear, though it would retreat for a time, remained there, ready to pounce again. It did so now, and in the grip of it she allowed herself to be led back to Barnhurst.

On this fine warm evening Mrs Mott-Tyler and the General had taken their drinks on to the terrace outside the drawing-room windows. Still holding Miss Mayfield by the arm, Miss Ellison went to the window nearest them and said, ‘Stella, could you spare a moment?’

Mrs Mott-Tyler, a glass in one hand, a cigarette in the other, sauntered in, and Miss Ellison, letting go of Miss Mayfield’s arm, stepped forward and closed the window.

‘I saw her going off to post a letter. After all the trouble I took to explain why she can’t go out alone. Look, I don’t mind the old, or the cripples, but the daft I can’t do with unless they do what I tell ’em to do.’

‘Margery! “Daft” is no word to use. You should know that. Poor Miss Mayfield, you look quite shattered. Sit down.’

‘I’m suffering from amnesia,’ Miss Mayfield said. ‘And that doesn’t give anybody the right to twist my arm or call me loopy and prevent me posting a letter if I wish.’

‘I think Miss Ellison was upset. You see, we are responsible for you. We did promise to . . . take good care of you. I’m sure no unkindness was intended.’

‘None at all. But, damn it, I’d got Miss Ferrers on the pan; I had to drop everything and run. I was in no condition to choose my words.’

‘You’d better get back to Miss Ferrers, then,’ Mrs Mott-Tyler said smoothly.

‘I still think you’d make things easier for everybody if you had a good straight talk,’ Miss Ellison said on her way to the door.

‘What did she mean by that?’