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asked Jenny’s advice on what to get him.
    ‘Matthew smokes,’ she had told Louise. ‘Why not get him a cigarette case? He hasn’t got one.’ So apparently that was what she had done.
    He’d also mentioned getting a couple of hundred pounds in bonds from his grandparents, his father’s people who lived in Finchley in north London – there were apparently no grandparents on his mother’s side. Then there had been the main present, a Ford Eight from his parents, in which he had proudly driven her the half-mile or so to the Salmon and Ball.
    ‘Well, open it then,’ Jenny urged as he paused over the slim blue box she had given him, now stripped of its colourful wrapping. Carefully he lifted the lid to gaze down at the humble pen and pencil set.
    ‘Jenny … that’s really nice.’
    She shrugged. ‘It’s just ordinary. I mean, it looks silver but it isn’t really. I expect you already have a set.’
    ‘No, I haven’t.’ He glanced up, giving her a long look. ‘Thanks Jenny – it’s the best present anyone could give me. I’ll probably need something like this when …’ Breaking off mid-sentence, leaving her to wonder what it was he had been about to say, he placed the box in his breast pocket with almost reverent care.
    ‘What about your other presents?’ she reminded him.
    He gave a sardonic chuckle. ‘Beware Greeks bearing gifts.’
    ‘How do you mean?’
    ‘I mean I feel I’ve been put under obligation by some people.’
    ‘What obligation?’
    ‘Oh …’ He heaved a sigh, playing absently with a box of matches put on the table for smokers’ convenience. ‘Doesn’t matter. Family business. But thanks, Jenny, for the gift.’ He reached for his glass. ‘Anyway, happy birthday, Matthew! May you have many more – God willing.’
    Not waiting for her to lift her own slender glass, he drained his at a gulp, blinked, then grinned across at her. ‘I think I’ll have another.’
    Jenny gnawed at her lip. ‘No, don’t, Matthew.’
    ‘It’s my birthday,’ he stated truculently, then grinned again. ‘Good old Libra, that’s me. Stuck in the balance. Death of summer, birth of darker days. God! I wish I’d been born in spring, years from now.’
    He was talking nonsense. He’d definitely had enough. But apparently he wasn’t of the same opinion as her. ‘I’m going to have another.’
    Frowning, he clicked a finger and thumb rudely at a passing waiter. ‘I want another brandy.’
    ‘Please, Matthew,’ Jenny hissed, embarrassed. ‘You mustn’t.’
    His frown deepened. ‘Christ! Not you as well.’
    ‘Me?’
    ‘Telling me what to do. Making decisions for me. Jus’ like my mother. She does that, all the time. Louise and I, we jus’ laugh, but sometimes … Time I was allowed to make decisions for m’self. Where’s that waiter? Ah.’
    The man stood beside him, polite yet superior, his elderly face lined and wise, his tone conveying the faintest hint of disapproval. ‘You ordered another brandy, sir.’
    ‘I did,’ snapped Matthew, but the wind had gone out of his sails. He sat slumped a little as the drink was placed before him. Listlessly he pulled out the new cigarette case, offered one to Jenny which she declined, took one himself, lit it from a gold lighter, a present from an uncle, and drew in a deep lungful of smoke.
    She had never seen him like this. It was as though she was looking at a totally different person to the buoyant carefree spirit of only a few weeks earlier. It made her heart ache.
    ‘It’s getting late,’ she urged, and when he shrugged, continuing to smoke, his brandy untouched, she added, ‘My mother doesn’t like me to be out too late. She gets lonely. She’ll be anxious.’
    At last he spoke. ‘You too?’
    ‘What do you mean, me too?’
    ‘Parent trouble.’
    ‘No, not really. It’s just that now there’s a war on, she worries.’ But a glimmer of his problem had begun to show itself. She leaned towards him. ‘Matthew. What’s the