‘I don’t know.’

‘You must know.’

‘I didn’t ever say to myself: I’m going to keep four notebooks, it just happened.’

‘Why not one notebook?’

She thought a while and said: ‘Perhaps because it would be such a — scramble. Such a mess.’

‘Why shouldn’t it be a mess?’

Anna was trying for just the right words to offer him when Janet’s voice sounded from upstairs: ‘Mummy?’

‘Yes? I thought you were asleep.’

‘I was asleep. I’m thirsty. Who are you talking to?’

‘Tommy. Do you want him to come up and say good night?’

‘Yes. And I want some water.’

Tommy quietly turned himself and went out; Anna heard him running water from the tap in the kitchen, and then plodding up the stairs. Meanwhile she was in an extraordinary tumult of sensations; as if every particle and cell of her body had been touched with some irritant. Tommy’s presence in the room and the necessity to think of how to face him had kept her more or less Anna, more or less herself. But now she hardly recognized herself. She wanted to laugh, to cry, even to scream; she wanted to hurt some object by taking hold of it and shaking and shaking until — this object was of course Tommy. She told herself that his state of mind had infected her; that she was being invaded by his emotions; marvelled that what appeared in his face as gleams of spite and hatred, appeared in his voice briefly as shrillness or hardness — should be the outward signs of such a violent inward storm; and suddenly understood that her palms and her armpits were cold and wet. She was afraid. All her various and conflicting sensations amounted to this: she was terrified. It surely wasn’t possible that she was physically frightened of Tommy? So frightened and yet she had sent him upstairs to talk to her child? But no, she was not in the least frightened for Janet. She could hear the two voices upstairs in cheerful exchange. Then a laugh — Janet’s. Then the slow determined steps and Tommy came back. He said at once: ‘What do you think Janet will be when she grows up?’ His face was pale and obstinate, but no more; and Anna felt easier. He stood by the trestle table, one hand on it, and Anna said: ‘I don’t know. She’s only eleven.’

‘Don’t you worry about it?’

‘No. Children keep changing. How do I know what she’ll want later on?’

His mouth pouted forward in a critical smile, and she said: ‘Why, have I said something stupid again?’

‘It’s the way you say it. Your attitude.’

‘I’m sorry.’ But in spite of herself, this sounded aggrieved, certainly irritated; and Tommy very briefly smiled with satisfaction. ‘Do you ever think about Janet’s father?’