She had the child, her self-respect, a future. She could not imagine this future without a man. Therefore, and of course she agreed that Julia was right to be so practical, she ought to be going to parties and accepting invitations. Instead she was sleeping too much and was depressed.

‘And besides, if I go, I’ll have to argue with Dr West, and it does no good.’ Ella meant that she believed Dr West was limiting his usefulness, not from lack of conscientiousness, but from lack of imagination. Any query which he could not answer by advice as to the right hospitals, medicine, treatment, he handed over to Ella.

‘I know, they are absolutely awful.’ By they, Julia meant the world of officials, bureaucrats, people in any kind of office. They, for Julia, were by definition middle-class — Julia was a communist, though she had never joined the Party, and besides she had working-class parents.

‘Look at this,’ said Ella excitedly, pulling a folded blue paper from her handbag. It was a letter, on cheap writing paper, and it read: ‘Dear Dr Allsop. I feel I must write to you in my desperation. I get my rheumatism in my neck and head. You advise other sufferers kindly in your column. Please advise me. My rheumatism began when my husband passed over on the 9th March, 1950, at 3 in the afternoon at the Hospital. Now I am getting frightened, because I am alone in my flat, and what might happen if my rheumatism attacked all over and then I could not move for help. Looking forward to your kind attention, yours faithfully. (Mrs) Dorothy Brown.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He said he had been engaged to write a medical column, not to run an out-patients for neurotics.’

‘I can hear him,’ said Julia, who had met Dr West once and recognized him as the enemy at first glance.

‘There are hundreds and thousands of people, all over the country, simmering away in misery and no one cares.’

‘No one cares a damn,’ said Julia. She stubbed out her cigarette and said, apparently giving up her struggle to get Ella to the party, ‘I’m going to have my bath.’ And she went downstairs with a cheerful clatter, singing.

Ella did not at once move. She was thinking: If I go, I’ll have to iron something to wear. She almost got up to examine her clothes, but frowned and thought: If I’m thinking of what to wear, that means that I really want to go? How odd. Perhaps I do want to go? After all, I’m always doing this, saying I won’t do something, then I change my mind. The point is, my mind is probably already made up. But which way? I don’t change my mind. I suddenly find myself doing something when I’ve said I wouldn’t. Yes. And now I’ve no idea at all what I’ve decided.