Everything seemed to have changed. Janet was gone. Marion and Tommy, paid for by Richard, went off to Sicily, taking with them a large number of books on Africa. They intended to visit Dolci, to find out if they could, as Marion put it, ‘be of any help to the poor thing. Do you know, Anna, I keep a photograph of him on my desk all the time?’

Molly was also alone in an empty house, having lost her son to her ex-husband’s second wife. She invited Richard’s sons to stay with her. Richard was delighted, although he still blamed Molly’s life for his son’s blindness. Molly entertained the boys while Richard went to Canada with his secretary to arrange the financing of three new steel mills. This trip was something like a honeymoon, since Marion had now agreed to a divorce.

Anna discovered she was spending most of her time doing nothing at all; and decided the remedy for her condition was a man. She prescribed this for herself like a medicine.

She was telephoned by a friend of Molly’s, she had no time for: because she was busy with Richard’s sons. This man was Nelson, an American script-writer whom she had met at Molly’s, and sometimes had dinner with.

When he rang Anna he said: ‘I must warn you against seeing me at all. I’m in danger of finding my wife impossible for the third time.’

At dinner they talked mostly about politics. ‘The difference between a red in Europe and a red in America is that in Europe a red is a communist; but in America he is a man who has never taken out a Party card out of caution or cowardice. In Europe you have communists and fellow-travellers. In America you have communists and exreds. I - and I insist on the difference, was a red. I don’t want to get into any more trouble than I am already. Well, now I’ve defined my position, will you take me home with you tonight?’

Anna was thinking: There’s only one real sin, and that is to persuade oneself that the second-best is anything but the second-best. What’s the use of always hankering after Michael?

So she spent the night with Nelson. He was, as she soon understood, in bad sexual trouble; she conspired with him, out of chivalry, in pretending there was nothing seriously wrong. They parted in the morning with friendship. Then she found herself weeping, in a low helpless depression. She told herself that the cure for this was not to sit alone, but to ring up one of her men friends. She did nothing of the sort, she was unable to face seeing anyone, let alone another ‘affair’.