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share their own particular problems, without need for further explanation, and there was, I thought, no need for pretence about our single state – we all had stories we could tell.
    As if to illustrate this, Veronica was moaning profanely about Ian and his new girlfriend and the new problems that were mounting as he tried to duck out of his appointed weekends with Avril. She stopped talking as the kids began to come out of the school and I felt immediately the strange illogical worry that always rose up in me as I searched for Jochen amongst the familiar faces, some atavistic motherly anxiety, I supposed: the cave-woman searching for her brood. Then I saw him – saw his stern, sharp features, his eyes searching for me, also – and the moment's angst receded as quickly as it had arrived. I wondered what we would have for supper tonight and what we would watch on TV. Everything was normal again.
    We – the four of us – sauntered back up the Banbury Road towards our homes. It was late afternoon and the heat seemed to possess extra gravity at this hour, as if it were physically pressing down on you. Veronica said she hadn't been this hot since she'd been on a holiday in Tunisia. Ahead of us Avril and Jochen walked, hand in hand, talking intensely to each other.
    'What've they got to talk about?' Veronica asked. 'They haven't lived enough.'
    'It's as if they've just discovered language, or something,' I said. 'You know: it's like when a kid learns to skip – they skip for months.'
    'Yeah, well, they can certainly talk…' She smiled. 'Wish I'd had a little boy. Big strong man to look after me.'
    'Want to swap?' I said, for some stupid, unthinking reason, and immediately felt guilty, as if I'd betrayed Jochen in some way. He wouldn't have understood the joke. He would have given me his look – dark, hurt, cross.
    We'd reached our junction. Here, Jochen and I turned left on to Moreton Road, heading for the dentist's while Veronica and Avril would continue on to Summertown, where they lived in a flat above an Italian restaurant called La Dolce Vita – she liked the daily ironic reminder, Veronica said, its persistent empty promise. As we stood there making vague plans for a punting picnic that weekend I suddenly told her about my mother, Sally/Eva. I felt I had to share this with at least one person before I talked to my mother: that the act of retelling it would make the new facts in my life more real for me – easier to confront. And easier to confront my mother too. It wouldn't be kept a secret between us because Veronica was party to it as well – I needed one extra-familial buttress to hold me steady.
    'My God,' Veronica said. 'Russian?'
    'Her real name is Eva Delectorskaya, she says.'
    'Is she all right? Is she forgetting things? Names? Dates?'
    'No, she's as sharp as a knife.'
    'Does she go off on errands then comes back because she can't remember why she went out?'
    'No,' I said, 'I think I have to accept it's all true,' and explained further. 'But there's something else going on, almost a kind of mania. She thinks she's being watched. Or else it's paranoia… She's always checking on things, other people. Oh, and she's got a wheelchair – says she's hurt her back. It's not true: she's perfectly fit. But she thinks something's going on, something sinister as far as she's concerned and so now she's decided to tell me the truth.'
    'Has she seen a doctor?'
    'Oh, yes. She convinced the doctor about her back – he provided the wheelchair.' I thought for a moment and then decided to tell her the rest. 'She says she was recruited by the British Secret Service in 1939.'
    Veronica had to smile at that, then looked baffled. 'But otherwise she seems perfectly normal?'
    'Define "normal",' I said.
    We parted and Jochen and I wandered along Moreton Road to the dentist's. Mr Scott was easing himself into his new Triumph Dolomite; he eased himself out and made some show of offering Jochen a mint – he always did this when he