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it?’
    She flushed. ‘Yes.’
     
    He had almost finished replacing the pane when Mrs Conroy arrived back. She was laden with parcels which she dumped on the drawing-room sofa before turning her gaze on Amanda.
    ‘My dear child, you look positively dreadful. You’re fretting for Nigel, I know you are. So why don’t you go and phone him, and tell him you’re sorry for whatever it was, and then we can all be happy again?’
    Amanda said quietly, ‘What makes you think I’m the one who should apologise?’
    Mrs Conroy shrugged. ‘Darling, what does it matter? It just needs one of you to make the first move.’
    ‘The question’s academic, anyway,’ Amanda said. ‘Nigel’s been here already, and I sent him away.’
    ‘Are you out of your mind?’ her mother almost shrieked.
    ‘I don’t think so—not any more.’
    ‘But what in the world could you have quarrelled about so drastically?’ Mrs Conroy wailed. ‘You were so well-suited—so perfect for each other in every way. And Nigel adored you.’
    And flattered
you
, Amanda thought suddenly, but didn’t say it.
    She sat staring at the carpet while her mother continued her diatribe, naming Nigel’s manifold perfections and desirability as a son-in-law.
    She wished she could tell her the whole story, but it was impossible. The first thing her mother would want to know would be why she’d gone to Calthorpe in the first place. And that was unanswerable. One of the cornerstones of Mrs Con-roy’s philosophy was that unmarried people did not sleep together. The permissive society had only served to strengthen this firmly held belief, although Amanda suspected with wry affection that, as far as her mother was concerned, sex, even for married people, was not a major priority.
    A broken engagement was enough of a disappointment for her mother to cope with. Mrs Conroy didn’t need to know that her only child had been about to kick over the traces so shamelessly.
    Suddenly Mrs Conroy paused, and stared up at the ceiling. ‘There’s someone moving around upstairs.’
    ‘Only Mr Ambrose. He’s mending a broken window in my room.’
    Mrs Conroy’s eyes widened. ‘How on earth…?’
    ‘I was doing some cleaning, and I had a slight accident, that’s all.’ Somehow, her mother had to be protected from the truth here, too.
    ‘Oh, I don’t understand any of this.’ Her mother looked on the verge of tears. ‘You seem determined to smash everything about you,’ she added unfairly. ‘And you don’t even consider the work you’re giving me. All kinds of arrangements will have to be cancelled—I only hope they haven’t actually started printing the invitations. It’s all too bad.’
    Amanda touched her shoulder. ‘Why don’t you put your feet up, and let me make you some tea?’ she urged gently. I’m sorry you’ve taken it like this, but you’ve got to believe that I can’t be happy with Nigel. And I’d really rather not talk about it any more.‘
    It was a miserable weekend, Mrs Conroy kept her verbal reproaches to herself, but the long-suffering looks and sighs she sent in Amanda’s direction were almost worse than a direct onslaught.
    Amanda went for a long walk, and on Saturday afternoon occupied herself with some furious digging in the garden, using her inevitable weariness as an excuse for an early night.
    She awoke on Sunday morning to the drowsy reflection that she only had a few more hours of silent recrimination to endure before she could go back to London and lose herself in her job. She wondered sleepily what her flatmates would have to say about her broken engagement and decided that, although Fiona and Maggie would treat it as a nine-day wonder, Jane wouldn’t be altogether surprised.
    She was shocked out of her somnolence by her mother’s thin, wavering scream from downstairs.
    What’s Nigel done now? was Amanda’s first thought as she threw back the bedclothes. Probably a dead cat through the letter-box!
    But the hall seemed