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they would let themselves in at the wobbly glass-fronted door, warble a reedy ‘Hi,’ then leap straight upstairs. They would sit in Rowena’s room, which smelled of new pine furniture and hoovered carpet, and discuss the dilemmas of their hearts.
    ‘So are you going to go for it then?’
    ‘What? Go for what?’
    ‘You know. With Colin. Are you going to, you know …?’
    Sally remembers this particular conversation. It’d had, she supposes, particular relevance. She remembers thinking of Colin Rafferty and blushing and blushing and turning to reach for something, anything, a distraction. A record. She picked it up. Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve). Rowena had an eclectic mix of singles which even at the time struck her as odd. How could someone like both the Buzzcocks and Supertramp?
    ‘You’ve gone puce,’ observed Rowena.
    ‘Thanks.’
    ‘You have, though.’
    And Sally had stared down at the record sleeve.
    ‘I –’ Rowena began, and she stopped. Then she said, ‘It’s just you clam up about him. Ever since we met him. You always go all thingummy, Sal. I know he’s the love of your life and everything …’
    Sally did not reply. She looked around Rowena’s room: at the china-headed Pierrot doll staring tragically into the night; at the make-up box and pink slippers; at the tips of the Cindy dolls’ feet peeping over the top of the wardrobe. She thought, ‘I have a boyfriend called Colin Rafferty.’ And a new image of him floated spectrally, heroically, into her mind.
    ‘I will tell you,’ she said. ‘It’s just, I mean, we haven’t …’
    ‘It’s all right,’ Rowena sighed, and Sally gazed, hot-faced, through the picture window at the almost technicolour garden beyond.
    *
    Occasionally, Sally spent the night at Rowena’s house. She remembers pulling flannelette sheets over the mattress of the Cresswells’ clanking Zed-bed; standing in the bathroom in her Love is … pyjamas. She remembers the tiny details that separatedRowena’s way of life from hers. The little silver dish containing Mrs Cresswell’s jewellery (Sally’s mother never took her wedding ring off); the over-large rubberwood fruit-bowl (at home they had a cut-glass trifle bowl); the woven place mats (they had cork boards with pictures of parrots); in the garden, the sprinkler on the lawn (the Tuttles had a watering can). At suppertime Sally would feel like a prodigal daughter, returned from a life of hardship. The four of them would sit around the table in the ‘L’ of the dining room, eating casserole from large beige dinner plates. Mr Cresswell would eat in total silence. Mrs Cresswell would talk about the woman who used too much washing-up liquid in the gift-shop café. Outside, Mrs Cresswell’s windchimes would clank in the breeze, the wires twisting around each other in a way which Sally felt must irritate her.
    *
    From time to time she would give little presents to Rowena. Pencil-sharpeners, 45 rpm singles, pretty hairgrips. She also used to give presents to Colin Rafferty. She didn’t have a clue about aloofness then, about sangfroid. She was just besotted and would bring these offerings to him, like a cat bringing dead mice to its owner. She bought him a corkscrew and a pocket knife and a badge; she brought him a beautiful green feather and a shiny pebble. Things like that were imbued with meaning – with eternal significance. Whatever happens, this means I will always love you. This time in our lives will always be …
    In all the time he knew her, Colin Rafferty gave her one thing: a postcard bearing the picture of an old Scottish fishwife, gutting herrings. Maybe giving presents heavy with poignancy was not something that men did. 

French Knot on Stalks
    I first met my husband in Rouen, on something the head of my department insists on calling a ‘jolly’.
    Jollies consist, in almost every country I have visited, of middle -aged academics helping themselves to wine and canapés in