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afternoon with passionate embraces – he had no wish to meet the sister and her boyfriend – he found himself making a date for the Monday evening and the Tuesday. Bothmade faces in mock despair over having nowhere to go, then laughed at their own absurdity.
    â€˜Issy has Andrew here for the night,’ Heather said. ‘You could come here.’
    â€˜Could I?’ he said. ‘I’d love to.’
    He couldn’t tell her of the scene with his mother he must face. A thirty-three-year-old man under his mother’s thumb is a comic figure, emphatically not the dashing lover. But he wasn’t really under his mother’s thumb any more, was he? He still had a way to go, he could see that, and he must persevere. Remembering his two nights with Heather brought him such luxurious delight that he seemed to gain strength and when he let himself into the house in Chudleigh Hill he was determined to speak out at once.
    Unfortunately, Marion was there. The minute he walked into the living room she ran out of it to return very rapidly with a tray on which was a hot drink for his mother, a fairy cake on a plate, two aspirins on a saucer, a bottle of inhalant with dropper, a tin of Fisherman’s Friend and tissues in a box as glittery and brightly coloured as a Christmas decoration.
    â€˜Aren’t you rather gilding the lily?’
    He could see that his mother was far better than she had been on Friday. She said nothing but looked at him with raised eyebrows.
    Marion managed an uncertain smile at his waspishness and began administering her remedies, chattering away. ‘Have you had a lovely time, Edmund? What did you do?’
    What a question! Made love, he thought. Fell in love. Had two days and two nights of bliss …
    â€˜It’s been so frightfully cold, hasn’t it? I met Mr Hussein while I was out this morning and I said to him, this cold must be worse for you than for the rest of us,I said, coming from such a hot place. And do you know what he said? He said, I come from the north, from Ladakh – I think it was Ladakh, though it might have been Lahore, some name like that – and it’s far colder there than it ever gets here, he said. I was amazed. You think of India being hot all the time, don’t you? Well, I know I do. It’s going to get milder tomorrow, no frost at any rate.’
    When she paused to draw breath, he rushed in with his announcement, afraid that if he left it till Marion was gone he would never make it. ‘I shall be away overnight on Tuesday too.’ On Monday, he had decided, he would go to the flat in Clapham but leave before midnight. His courage increasing with every word, ‘I am taking Heather out to dinner and I shall be spending the night with her.’
    â€˜I see.’
    His mother’s words dropped like pebbles into still water. Even Marion was silenced.
    Irene had flushed a deep red. ‘Do you think it’s very nice’, she said, ‘to speak about a young woman in those terms? Personally, I doubt if ever in the history of the world it has been acceptable for a man to talk about a respectable girl like that. Spending the night with her, indeed. Now I’ve heard everything.’
    Marion giggled. She stood, screwing back the cap on the inhaler bottle. ‘Yes, I must say it rather took my breath away,’ she said in a conversational tone. ‘I couldn’t help thinking to myself, how would I feel if my – well, my sweetheart, I suppose – talked about me like that. I wouldn’t like it. I’d feel so embarrassed. I think these things call for a certain amount of discretion, don’t you?’
    â€˜Since you ask,’ said Edmund, made strong and brave by the delights of a full sex life, ‘I don’t give a stuff what you think. You should mind your own business.’
    A little shriek from Marion and a loud ‘Heavens above!’ from his mother drove Edmund from the