‘How is she?’

‘She’s hardly drunk anything since Tommy’s accident.’

‘Who told you?’

‘She told Tommy and Tommy told me.’

‘Oh. What did he say?’

Molly imitated her son’s slow pedantic voice: ‘“Marion’s really doing quite well, on the whole. She’s coming on quite nicely.”’

‘He didn’t?’

‘Oh yes, he did.’

‘Well at least Richard must be pleased.’

‘He’s furious. He writes me long furious letters — and when I open one of them, even if I’ve ten other letters by the same post, Tommy says: And what does my father have to say? — Marion comes nearly every day and spends hours with him. He’s like an elderly professor welcoming his favourite pupil.’

‘Well …’ said Anna helplessly. ‘Well.’

‘Yes, I know.’

Anna was summoned to Richard’s office a few days later. He telephoned, brusque with hostility, to say: ‘I’d like to see you. I could come to your place if you want.’ ‘But obviously you don’t want.’ ‘I daresay I could spare an hour or two tomorrow afternoon.’ ‘Oh no, I’m sure you really haven’t the time. I’ll come to you. Shall we make an appointment?’ ‘Would three o’clock tomorrow suit you?’ ‘Three it is,’ said Anna, conscious she was pleased Richard was not coming to her flat. During the last months she had been haunted by the memory of Tommy standing over her notebooks, turning page after page, on the evening he had tried to kill himself. She had made few entries recently; and then with effort. She felt as if the boy, his hot dark eyes accusing, stood at her elbow. She felt that her room was no longer her own. And having Richard in it would have made things worse.

At precisely three o’clock she was presenting herself to Richard’s secretary, telling herself that of course he would make a point of keeping her waiting. About ten minutes, she judged would be the amount of time necessary to feed his vanity. Fifteen minutes later she was informed she might enter.

As Tommy had said, Richard behind his desk was impressive in a way she would never have expected possible. The head offices of this empire occupied four floors of an ancient and ugly building in the City. These offices were of course not where the actual business was done; but rather a showcase for the personalities of Richard and his associates. The décor was tactful and international. One would not have been surprised to see it anywhere in the world. From the moment one entered the great front door; the lift, corridors, waiting rooms, were a long but discreet preparation for the moment one finally entered Richard’s office. The floor was six inches deep in thick dark pile. The walls were of dark glass between white panels. It was lit unemphatically; and apparently from behind the various wall plants that trailed well-tended greenery from level to level. Richard, his sullen and obstinate body cancelled by anonymous suiting, sat behind a desk that looked like a tomb in greenish marble.