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he suddenly became much older in her eyes; a man as he had never been before; never again to be her child only.

‘Wouldn’t it be nice if Celia could come with us to Paris this Easter?’ It must have been a fortnight later that she had asked him this question, one evening when he and she had returned together from the play and were drinking hot bouillon in the drawing-room. He was standing opposite her, his cup in his hand, and as he looked at her she saw that his sweet, attentive face was jaded, almost haggard.

‘Paris? Were we thinking of Paris, Mummy?’ he asked.

‘Well, wouldn’t it be rather nice for Easter? We have not been there since before the war, nor has Celia. We could show her everything.’ France had been one of the family traditions in Monica’s youth and she had seen to it that Clive inherited it. She was always scraping and saving in the West Kensington days to give him his holidays in France, to see cathedrals and follow the course of the great French rivers with knapsacks on their backs.

‘That would be delightful,’ said Clive, ‘but what about summer? Isn’t Easter rather early for Paris?’