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challenged her wisdom. And rising with as much dignity as her plump frame and flounced cotton will allow, Alison takes Erica and Libby home and installs them for the night in the spare room of the cosy house in Muswell Hill.
    Hugo isn’t any too pleased. ‘Your smart sick friends,’ he says. And, ‘I’d beat a woman like that to death myself, any day.’ And, ‘Dragging that poor child into it: it’s appalling.’ He’s nice to Libby, though, and rings up Derek to say she’s safe and sound, and looks after her while Alison takes Erica round to the doctor. The doctor sends Erica round to the hospital, and the hospital admits her for tests and treatment.
    ‘Why bother?’ enquires Hugo. ‘Everyone knows she’s mad.’
    In the evening, Derek comes all the way to Muswell Hill in his Ferrari to pick up Libby. He’s an attractive man: intelligent and perspicacious, fatherly and gentle. Just right, it occurs to Alison, for Maureen.
    ‘I’m so sorry about all this,’ he says. ‘I love my wife dearly but she has her problems. There’s a dark side to her nature – you’ve no idea. A deep inner violence – which of course manifests itself in this kind of behaviour. She’s deeply psychophrenic. I’m so afraid for the child.’
    ‘The hospital did admit her,’ murmurs Alison. ‘And not to the psychiatric ward, but the surgical.’
    ‘That will be her hysterectomy scar again,’ says Derek. ‘Any slight tussle – she goes quite wild, and I have to restrain her for her own safety – and it opens up. It’s symptomatic of her inner sickness, I’m afraid. She even says herself it opens to let the build-up of wickedness out. What I can’t forgive is the way she drags poor little Libby into things. She’s turning the child against me. God knows what I’m going to do. Well, at least I can bury myself in work. I hear you’re an actor, Hugo.’
    Hugo offers Derek a drink, and Derek offers (well, more or less) Hugo a part in a new rock musical going on in the West End. Alison goes to visit Erica in hospital.
    ‘Erica has some liver damage, but it’s not irreversible: she’ll be feeling nauseous for a couple of months, that’s all. She’s lost a back tooth and she’s had a couple of stitches put in her vagina,’ says Alison to Maureen and Ruthie next day. The blouse order never got completed – re-orders now look dubious. But if staff haven’t the loyalty to work unpaid overtime any more, what else can be expected? The partners (nominal) can’t do everything.
    ‘Who said so?’ enquires Maureen, sceptically. ‘The hospital or Erica?’
    ‘Well,’ Alison is obliged to admit, ‘Erica.’
    ‘You are an innocent, Alison.’ Maureen sounds quite cross. ‘Erica can’t open her poor sick mouth without uttering a lie. It’s her hysterectomy scar opened up again, that’s all. No wonder. She’s a nymphomaniac: she doesn’t leave Derek alone month in, month out. She has the soul of a whore. Poor man. He’s so upset by it all. Who wouldn’t be?’
    Derek takes Maureen out to lunch. In the evening, Alison goes to visit Erica in hospital, but Erica has gone. Sister says, oh yes, her husband came to fetch her. They hadn’t wanted to let her go so soon but Mr Bisham seemed such a sensible, loving man, they thought he could look after his wife perfectly well, and it’s always nicer at home, isn’t it? Was it the Derek Bisham? Yes she’d thought so. Poor Mrs Bisham – what a dreadful world we live in, when a respectable married woman can’t even walk the streets without being brutally attacked, sexually assaulted by strangers.
    It’s 1974.
    Winter. A chill wind blowing, a colder one still to come. A three-day week imposed by an insane government. Strikes, power cuts, blackouts. Maureen, Ruthie and Alison work by candlelight. All three wear fun-furs – old stock, unsaleable. Poppy is staying with Ruthie’s mother, as she usually is these days. Poppy has been developing a squint, and the doctor says she