‘Why?’ asked Miss Appleby, suddenly sharp. ‘What happens if you drink alcohol after eating them?’

‘It results in violent vomiting.’

Miss Appleby stared at him, mouth open. The tip of her nose, which usually moved cheerily up and down whenever she talked or laughed, was ominously static, and her eyes – hare’s eyes, slightly protuberant – were suddenly bulging with tears, and she pushed back her chair and ran from the room.

‘Oh dear,’ said Dr Parry-Jones, with no obvious emotion.

‘Ah, the tender feelings of a young lady,’ said Mr Reddish, sonorously. ‘“My eyes are tired of weeping, my heart is sick of woe …”’

‘I wish the door would open, I’m desperate for the po,’ finished Mr Jepson, sotto voce, to Noel. ‘The song of the lodging-house bathroom.’

Noel laughed, and Vee rose, reluctantly. ‘I suppose I’d better see what the matter is.’

When she’d started taking in paying guests, she’d thought that the worst of it would be the constant cleaning, the nasty surprises found clinging to sheets or round the bowl of the water closet, but far worse than those were the unwonted roles constantly thrust upon her by a houseful of strangers: she had to be confidante, captive audience, magistrate in inter-lodger feuding occasioned by repeated use of a toothpick during meals, and here she was again, missing her supper and following the sound of weeping up the stairs.

‘Miss Appleby …?’

Sheila Appleby was sitting on her bed. She had one of those delicate complexions that respond violently to emotion, and now looked as if she’d had a snowball rammed in her face.

‘Whatever’s the matter?’ asked Vee, not really wanting to know. It would be a man, again.

‘Auggie,’ said Sheila.

‘Is that the sailor?’

‘Soldier.’

‘The Canadian?’

‘The American.’ The latter word was broken by a sob and extended across at least five syllables. The girl groped in her sleeve for a handkerchief. ‘He’s leaving tomorrow, Mrs Overs, his unit’s going to Italy, though he’s not supposed to have told me, so don’t pass it on to anyone, and he’s taking me to Rainbow Corner tonight and he says he has something for me and I keep thinking that it might be a ring …’

‘Well, he can still propose to you if you don’t drink alcohol, can’t he?’

Sheila threw her an incredulous look. ‘You don’t understand what it’s like there, it’s not a pub, you don’t sit in the corner with a glass of shandy – it’s … it’s … it’s like a dream …’ She waved her hands, trying to convey the fabulous extravagance of the American Servicemen’s Club, as if Vee might somehow have missed all the gossip about the whisky cocktails in half-pint glasses, the plates of pink-and-white ice-cream, the hot doughnuts dusted with actual sugar, cigarettes full of tobacco instead of shredded string, the dustbins outside bursting with half-eaten steaks.

‘I can’t drink lemonade, like an old lady, he’d think I’d gone crazy. You just don’t understand,’ said Sheila again, and there was both dismissal and condescension in her tone, as if addressing a village crone who’d never been further than the duck-pond. She blew her nose and picked up her compact. ‘Maybe if I just have the one, I’ll get away with it …’ she said.