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and any expectations of a transforming experience which the congregation might have entertained. Indeed so downbeat was it, yet so determinedly cheerful were its female congregants, that we had decided, my mother and I, that we were disbarred from receiving its particular message by some quirk of character which others could discern at a glance. We warmed to the ladies, but not to the incumbent or celebrant, who would appear briefly on the threshold in ordinary working clothes, and looking as if he had just got out of bed himself. The motorbike was presumably his. When my mother passed him in the street he would nod his head very briefly, as if noting her reservations. No word was offered; he consigned her to her fate. Her salvation was not his concern.
    In this terrible Sunday-morning gloom our building retained a modest air of Edwardian decency. I supposed that I should look in on the new flat to which I had the keys, had had them for some time. I was reluctant to take possession: I had not chosen the flat and did not like it. The Mediterranean feel that the estate agent had described did not extend beyond the windows, which let in very little light, and that of poor quality, owing to the courtyard effect, which had been designed not for the tenants’ amenity but so as to cram as many flats as possible into a restricted space. In order to see the street I was obliged to imagine the intervening buildings out of the way. At the same time it was noisy. When I had looked in one evening I could hear the light being switched on in the bedroom on the other side of the wall. I had not met any of my new neighbours, had not yet said goodbye to any of the old ones. They were used to seeing me going in and out, but would not worry unduly if I no longer did so. ‘You’re young,’ one woman had said to me enviously. ‘It’s easy for you. Here today, gone tomorrow. When you get to my age it’s a different matter, as you’ll find out.’ I did not want to hear this, for nothing surely could deprive me of my freedom, my lightness of touch. My expectations.
    My clothes were packed, and my suitcases were in the bedroom of which I had seen so little recently, for most nights were spent in a large dilapidated house in Langton Street which was owned, or partly owned, by the man of whom my mother would not approve, Adam Crowhurst. She would not approve of him because she was of the wrong generation to understand so extremely uninhibited a personality. Middle-aged women, those who did not succumb to his outrageous charm, looked askance at his conquests and consoled themselves with their hard-won dignity and the knowledge that they were safe. I was an unlikely partner for him, since I was docile, and, I thought, uninteresting. But I had managed to win his friendship, which presumably other women scorned as a consolation prize for the total possession which he withheld. Prince Charming must have had the same effect on those whom the slipper did not fit. Was it possible that some part of me, the most archaic, the most unreconstructed part, still remained faithful to that schema, to that belief? If so I am ashamed to this day of my touching credulity. The gods, with whom at that time I was barely acquainted, were ready with their punishing gifts of caprice, of unaccountability. Their behaviour was in all cases unforgivable, yet those in my situation were persuaded of their power, since all depended on their favour. Thus two opposing interpretations fought for precedence, not only in my situation but in the world of quite sensible men and women, women in particular, hoping for a successful outcome to hopeless love affairs, convinced that there must be—
must
be—a reward for virtue, yet seeing all around them evidence of expectations unfulfilled, and worse, their own bewilderment turned into a joke that others might enjoy.
    I had no idea what to do with my day. The evening, fortunately, was taken care of: I was to dine at Adam’s house,