It was ironic, she thought, that Greg had a son even though he had never wanted one, and Boy had no son even though he longed for one so badly.

Boy came out of the doctor’s office an hour later. The doctor promised to give them their results in a week. They left at twelve noon.

‘I need a drink after that,’ Boy said.

‘So do I,’ said Daisy.

They looked up and down the street of identical row houses. ‘This neighbourhood is a bloody desert. Not a pub in sight.’

‘I’m not going to a pub,’ said Daisy. ‘I want a martini, and they don’t know how to make them in pubs.’ She spoke from experience. She had asked for a dry martini at the King’s Head in Chelsea and had been served a glass of disgustingly warm vermouth. ‘Take me to Claridge’s hotel, please. It’s only five minutes’ walk.’

‘Now that’s a damn good idea.’

The bar at Claridge’s was full of people they knew. There were austerity rules about the meals restaurants could sell, but Claridge’s had found a loophole: there were no restrictions on giving food away, so they offered a free buffet, charging only their usual high prices for drinks.

Daisy and Boy sat in art deco splendour and sipped perfect cocktails, and Daisy began to feel better.

‘The doctor asked me if I’d had mumps,’ Boy said.

‘But you have.’ It was mainly a childhood illness, but Boy had caught it a couple of years back. He had been briefly billeted at a vicarage in East Anglia, and had picked up the infection from the vicar’s three small sons. It had been very painful. ‘Did he say why?’

‘No. You know what these chaps are like. Never tell you a bloody thing.’

It occurred to Daisy that she was not as happy-go-lucky as she had once been. In the old days she would never have brooded about her marriage this way. She had always liked what Scarlett O’Hara said in Gone with the Wind: ‘I’ll think about that tomorrow.’ Not any more. Perhaps she was growing up.

Boy was ordering a second cocktail when Daisy looked towards the door and saw the Marquis of Lowther walking in, dressed in a creased and stained uniform.

Daisy disliked him. Ever since he had guessed at her relationship with Lloyd he had treated her with oily familiarity, as if they shared a secret that made them intimates.

Now he sat at their table uninvited, dropping cigar ash on his khaki trousers, and asked for a manhattan.

Daisy knew at once that he was up to no good. There was a look of malignant relish in his eye that could not be explained merely as anticipation of a good cocktail.

Boy said: ‘I haven’t seen you for a year or so, Lowthie. Where have you been?’

‘Madrid,’ Lowthie said. ‘Can’t say much about it. Hush-hush, you know. How about you?’

‘I spend a lot of time training pilots, though I’ve flown a few missions lately, now that we’ve stepped up the bombing of Germany.’