Today she asked again: ‘When am I going to boarding-school, I want to go with Mary.’ (Her friend.)

I told her we would have to leave this big flat, get a smaller one, and that I must get a job. Not immediately however. For the third time a film company has bought the rights of Frontiers of War, but it won’t come to anything. Well I hope not, anyway. I wouldn’t have sold the rights if I’d believed the film would be made. The money will keep us, living simply, even with Janet at boarding-school.

I’ve been investigating progressive schools.

Told Janet about them, she said: ‘I want to go to an ordinary boarding-school.’ I said, ‘There is nothing ordinary about a conventional English girls’ boarding-school, they are unique in the world.’ She said: ‘You know quite well what I mean. And besides, Mary is going.’

Janet will be leaving in a few days. Today Molly rang up and said there was an American in town looking for a room. I said I didn’t want to let rooms. She said: ‘But you’re in that enormous flat all by yourself, you don’t have to see him.’ I persisted, and then she said, ‘Well I think it’s just anti-social. What’s happened to you, Anna?’ The what’s happened to you hit me. Because of course it’s anti-social, and I don’t care. She said: ‘Have a heart, he’s an American lefty, he’s got no money, he’s been blacklisted, and there you are in a flat with all those empty rooms.’ I said: ‘If he’s an American on the loose in Europe, he’ll be writing the American epic novel and he’ll be in psycho-analysis and he’ll have one of those awful American marriages and I’ll have to listen to his troubles — I mean problems.’ But Molly didn’t laugh, she said: ‘If you don’t look out you’ll be like the other people who’ve left the Party. I met Tom yesterday, he left the Party over Hungary. He used to be a sort of unofficial soul-daddy for dozens of people. He’s changed into something else. I heard he’d suddenly doubled the rent of the rooms he lets in his house, and he’s stopped being a teacher, he’s taken a job in an advertising agency. I rang him up to ask what the hell he thought he was doing, and he said: “I’ve been taken for a sucker long enough.” So you’d better be careful, Anna.’