‘You’ve been very good to me. Oh, it’s damned hard … Frankie, my precious, I suppose I really want to tell you that I love you. As much as ever – more than ever. I want you to know that and believe it. I may not be the exactly right wife, but no other wife could love you more.’

He held her firmly. ‘What’s triggered this off? Why this – at this moment? Intimations of mortality? Or what?’ He paused. ‘My going back for the week-end to Holly Ash?’

She looked at him mutely. ‘But why.’ he asked. ‘Why should a little thing like that have this kind of effect?’

He waited for her to answer. She said, at last:

‘It’s silly, isn’t it? But I told you it was. Do you remember, right at the beginning, I wanted you to tell me about your life? You never would. I asked you about Holly Ash, but you always changed the subject. I told you everything there was about me. But you came, in uniform, with a blanked-out past. Part of you always has been a stranger.’

‘The mystery man.’ He got up and went to the sideboard. ‘I think I’ll have another drink after all. You? No? Helen, my love, you are being silly. You’ve met my parents. What have you been imagining – a wife and family hidden away in the dark recesses of Holly Ash? Or something even worse?’

‘No, of course not. It’s just that … why wouldn’t you talk about it?’

He drank his whisky. ‘Because there was nothing to say. Because the whole thing was too drab and too wretched to be worth talking about. Most of all because I wanted to forget Holly Ash. You know what the New Towns are like? Holly Ash was a New Town.’

‘But you want to go back there.’

‘Yes. The stupidest kind of vanity. I want to go back and show myself – to jeer at them: “Look how I got away!” Only that.’