‘A phase — it was one night when you were having supper with my mother in the kitchen. I lay in bed and listened, you were laughing and talking. I came down the stairs to get a glass of water. I was unhappy just then, worrying about everything. I couldn’t do my school-work and I was frightened at night. Of course the glass of water was just a pretence. I wanted to be in the kitchen — because of the way you two laughed. I wanted to be near the laughter. I didn’t want either of you to know I was scared. Outside the door I heard you say: How’s Tommy, and my mother said, He’s in a difficult phase.’

‘Well?’ Anna was in a trough of exhaustion: she was thinking of Janet. Janet had just woken up and asked for a glass of water. Was Tommy meaning to say to her that Janet was unhappy?

‘It cancelled me out,’ said Tommy sullenly. ‘All through my childhood I kept reaching something that seemed new and important. I kept gaining victories. That night I had won a victory — being able to come down the dark stairs pretending that nothing was wrong. I was clinging on to something, a feeling of who I really was. Then my mother says, just a phase. In other words, what I felt just then didn’t matter, it was a product of glands or something, and it would pass.’

Anna said nothing; she was worrying about Janet. Yet the child seemed friendly, cheerful, and she was doing well at school. She very seldom woke at night and had never said anything about being afraid of the dark.

Tommy was saying: ‘I suppose you and my mother have been saying that I am in a difficult phase?’

‘I don’t think we’ve said it. But I expect we’ve implied it,’ said Anna wryly.

‘What I feel now doesn’t matter at all? But at what point am I entitled to say to myself, what I am feeling now is valid? After all, Anna —’ Here Tommy turned to face her: ‘one can’t go through one’s whole life in phases. There must be a goal somewhere.’ His eyes gleamed out hatred; and it was with difficulty that Anna said: ‘If you’re suggesting that I’ve reached a goal, and I’m judging you from some superior point, then it’s not true.’

‘Phases,’ he insisted. ‘Stages. Growing pains.’

‘But I think that’s how women see — people. Certainly their own children. In the first place, there’s always been nine months of not knowing whether the baby would be a girl or a boy. Sometimes I wonder what Janet would have been like if she’d been born a boy. Don’t you see? And then babies go through one stage after another, and then they are children. When a woman looks at a child she sees all the things he’s been at the same time. When I look at Janet sometimes I see her as a small baby and I feel her inside my belly and I see her as various sizes of small girl, all at the same time.’ Tommy’s stare was accusing and sarcastic, but she persisted: ‘That’s how women see things. Everything in a sort of continuous creative stream — well, isn’t it natural we should?’