‘Oh no, darling. She and Ace have been living together in New York for the past six months.’

‘Are you sure?’ I said.

‘Of course I am,’ said Rose rather acidly. ‘She’s spent all afternoon, when she wasn’t on the telephone, telling us what a “warm beautiful human being” Ace is. I hope she’s tough enough to cope with him.’

Once in my room, despair overwhelmed me. To be so unprepared. To have no idea I had fallen so totally in love, only to find it was hopeless. And to think I’d been presumptuous enough to imagine that a man in Ace’s class could possibly fancy someone as young and unsophisticated as me. It was ludicrous.

I didn’t cry. It’s funny, you don’t when something really cataclysmic happens. I sat on the bed trembling and dry eyed, clutching the kitten who purred noisily, and grooved the side of its face against my chin.

Desperately I cast around for some kind of comfort, but there was none. No lifebelts, no driftwood, no passing ships.

‘Oh no,’ I whispered. ‘No, no, no.’

There was a knock on the door. My heart leapt. Perhaps it was Ace come to say it was all some horrible mistake. But it was Lucasta in tears.

‘I can’t find my foxy,’ she sobbed. ‘I’ve looked for him everywhere.’

‘He’s in the hot cupboard,’ I said. ‘We put him there after he fell in the bath yesterday.’

‘Oh, so we did. Please don’t go away again. I’ve been left with Mrs Braddock all day. I wasn’t allowed in the drawing-room because Bare Knees is there. She said she just loved children; then she kept telling me to go away. Granny says she’s going to marry Ace. I hope she doesn’t. At twelve o’clock tonight, I can say tomorrow’s my birthday. You will stay for my party, won’t you?’

Would I? I was tempted to bolt straight back to London, but couldn’t bear to tear myself away quite yet.

‘Oh look,’ said Lucasta, running to the window.

Snow was beginning to fall. A glistening, crumbling drift had formed on the window ledge. Now a storm of big flakes swept giddily by.

‘Tomorrow we can make a snowman. Oh, I wish I had a sledge.’

I looked at myself in the mirror. My reflection stared back pale and hollow-eyed, with the exhausted gritted-teeth look of a candidate who’s just lost his seat. What the hell could I wear tonight? Ace had seen everything I’d brought. All my seductive clothes were in London, anyway, except for my green culotte dress, which was much too naked, and went too well with my little green face.

In the end I kept my jeans on, and put on a white slightly see-through shirt. Not that there’s much to see any more, I thought gloomily. Then I discovered I’d left my only decent eye-shadow behind in the pub at lunchtime. It seemed centuries ago, when I was happy.

Ace was waiting in the hall.

He’d changed into a suit and a pink shirt. Oh the beauty of those broad pinstriped shoulders, and long, long legs. I could smell his aftershave. I felt faint with longing.

‘Are you sure you’re up to going out?’ he said.

I could read the compassion in his eyes.

‘I’m fine,’ I snapped, absolutely terrified of betraying myself.

Dorothy’s restaurant was named after Dorothy Wordsworth. It had soft lighting, black beams, framed photostats of pages from Dorothy Wordsworth’s diary on the whitewashed walls, and forced daffodils on every table. It was pretty but a bit twee. Berenice, however, absolutely freaked out, standing in the doorway of the dining-room in her huge wolf coat, shrieking,

‘My God, I am not ready for this! I am simply not ready for this!’

‘Well if you’re not, I am,’ said Jimmy Batten briskly. ‘Come on, Pru. You go in first. I’ll sit next to you.’

Maggie sat on the other side, with Jack opposite me, and Berenice next to him, and then Ace. So at least I didn’t have to spend all dinner directly avoiding his eyes. Berenice made a great deal of palaver about removing her coat and entrusting it to the waiter, until everyone in the restaurant was staring at us.

‘Isn’t this place just darling?’ she went on, glancing round at the couples in the alcoves. ‘We must come here on our own one evening, Ivan darling.’

She was slightly less amused when she consulted the menu, which took up the whole table, and discovered there were no vegetarian dishes.

‘I forgot you were all on this carnivore trip over here,’ she said. ‘Can you have a word with the waiter, Ivan? They might have some egg plant lasagne or some lentils.’

‘They’re not into all that macrobiotic crap over here,’ said Ace. ‘This is England.’

‘Oh well,’ said Berenice, looking martyred, ‘I’ll just settle for veggies and sour cream this evening.’

‘I’d like an enormous steak, very rare, and chips,’ Jack said to the waiter. ‘And tell the wine waiter to step on it.’

‘We’re not into gourmet tripping any more in the States,’ said Berenice. ‘I just ask people to drop around and take pot luck.’

‘And then dump another quart of water in the lentil soup,’ said Jimmy Batten, spreading butter thickly on a roll.

Berenice looked at him in disapproval. ‘You don’t realize what white flour does to you, James. It amazes me the garbage you British eat. Ivan was living on hamburgers when I met him. No wonder he nearly had an ulcer.’

‘When’s your new book coming out?’ said Jack.

‘In January. It’s being translated into fifteen languages.’

‘It ought to be translated into English first,’ said Ace.

‘Oh starp, sweetest, starp,’ said Berenice, laughing. ‘He’s so vile about my literary style. Being an academic, I’m afraid I’m used to writing for an optimum intellectual readership. You know I can’t believe I’m in Ivan’s home town at last.’

‘We can’t quite believe you’re here either,’ said Jack. ‘We’re going to need at least four bottles, Ace.’

‘Such a relief going into a restaurant where I’m not known,’ said Berenice. ‘In the States I can’t cross the street without being mobbed.’

She’s utterly poisonous, I thought.

‘Cheer up, darling,’ whispered Jimmy Batten in my ear. ‘How’s Pendle?’

‘He’s coming up on Saturday to collect me,’ I said.

‘Not going very well?’

I shook my head.

‘Thought as much.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Still after Maggie? Poor old you. I should have warned you when we met in London. Maggie looks terrible too. I’ve never seen such a deterioration in anyone. She used to be so pretty.’

The dinner seemed to go on for ever. I had to force myself to get any food down, taking frequent gulps of wine. Ace was talking to Jimmy Batten about delinquency in New York. Berenice was going on and on about Jack’s unimaginative life style. ‘You ought to cut out that nine to five shit,’ she said, waving a cauliflower floweret in the air, ‘and get in touch with the universe.’

‘I can’t really cut it out,’ protested Jack. ‘I’ve got two households to support.’

Now Berenice was rabbiting on about her last husband. ‘I wanted an open living relationship based on trust and growth, and all he wanted was his jockey shorts ironed. I mean we weren’t coming from the same place at all.’

‘And Ace doesn’t expect you to do his ironing?’ said Jack. Suddenly I felt his ankle rubbing up and down against mine.

‘Oh, starp. Don’t make comparisons,’ said Berenice, putting one of her lovely sunburned hands on Jack’s arm. ‘Ivan is just terrific. He gives off this incredible togetherness, it’s beautiful. We have these terrifically productive dialogues, sitting around for hours rapping.’

‘Surprised you don’t find him too forceful,’ said Jack.

‘Well he’s a Leo of course,’ admitted Berenice. ‘They’re very big on macho tripping, but he’s trying to overcome it.’

For a second I met Ace’s eye, found myself blushing and looked away.

‘I was a big star, of course, when I met Ivan,’ Berenice went on. ‘But my life was empty. I needed a whole, loving, caring environment, where I could be totally committed. You’ve no idea the creases he’s taken out of my mind.’

‘So Ace is the one who’s doing the ironing,’ said Jack, gravely.

Berenice didn’t flicker. She was not to be deflected. She was in such full flood she didn’t even notice when Jack rolled a tonic bottle across the table towards me. Inside on a bit of paper he’d written ‘Help’.

I took it out, and wrote ‘I love you’ on the back, and rolled it back again. It was a comfort that he thought her as silly as I did. But she was certainly mad for Ace. She’d reached the stage now when she couldn’t bear not to touch him. Her free hand strayed now to his hair, now to the nape of his neck, now to his thigh.

Then she decided I needed bringing in and asked me what I thought of Northern Ireland, but my mouth was still full of dry, unswallowable chicken, so I just shook my head, and she said she thought people’s capacity for outrage in this country was amazingly dulled.

Then it was Maggie’s turn. She was wearing the shirt Ace had brought her from the States.

‘I’m so glad you’re wearing that shirt, Margaret. Ivan and I must have gone to a dozen shops to find the right colour.’ Then she turned to Ace, licking him on the ear. ‘And you’ve no idea the free gift I’ve got for you later darling,’ she said huskily.

I couldn’t bear any more. I could feel the sweat rising on my forehead, it was so hot.

‘Must go to the loo,’ I muttered, wriggling round the table, and scuttling across the restaurant.

When I came out I found Jimmy Batten.

‘I’ll take you home,’ he said.

‘Oh, please.’ I felt sick and giddy, very near to tears.

‘I’ll just go and tell everyone.’

‘Could you just get a waiter to tell them after we’ve gone?’