‘What I mean is, I’d rather be …’he floundered, and was silent a moment, moving his lips together, frowning. ‘I’ve been thinking about it because I knew I’d have to explain it to you.’ He said this patiently, quite prepared to meet his parents’ unjust demands. ‘People like Anna or Molly and that lot, they’re not just one thing, but several things. And you know they could change and be something different. I don’t mean their characters would change, but they haven’t set into a mould. You know if something happened in the world, or there was a change of some kind, a revolution or something …’ He waited, a moment, patiently, for Richard’s sharply irritated indrawn breath over the word revolution, to be expelled, and went on: ‘they’d be something different if they had to be. But you’ll never be different, father. You’ll always have to live the way you do now. Well I don’t want that for myself,’ he concluded, allowing his lips to set, pouting over his finished explanation.

‘You’re going to be very unhappy,’ said Molly, almost moaning it.

‘Yes, that’s another thing,’ said Tommy. ‘The last time we discussed everything, you ended by saying, Oh, but you’re going to be unhappy. As if it’s the worst thing to be. But if it comes to unhappiness, I wouldn’t call either you or Anna happy people, but at least you’re much happier than my father. Let alone Marion.’ He added the last softly, in direct accusation of his father.

Richard said, hotly, ‘Why don’t you hear my side of the story, as well as Marion’s?’

Tommy ignored this, and went on: ‘I know I must sound ridiculous. I knew before I even started I was going to sound naïve.’

‘Of course you’re naïve,’ said Richard.

‘You’re not naïve,’ said Anna.

‘When I finished talking to you last time, Anna, I came home and I thought, Well, Anna must think I’m terribly naïve.’

‘No, I didn’t. That’s not the point. What you don’t seem to understand is, we’d like you to do better than we have done.’

‘Why should I?’

‘Well perhaps we might still change and be better,’ said Anna, with deference towards youth. Hearing the appeal in her own voice she laughed and said, ‘Good Lord, Tommy, don’t you realize how judged you make us feel?’

For the first time Tommy showed a touch of humour. He really looked at them, first at her, and then at his mother, smiling. ‘You forget that I’ve listened to you two talk all my life. I know about you, don’t I? I do think that you are both rather childish sometimes, but I prefer that to …’He did not look at his father, but left it.