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back to her reasons for living in London. Who would you rather live with, a well-connected travel writer who was a
personal friend of Salman Rushdie, or a sad old commuter whose idea of fun was taking part in the village quiz-night? No contest, and anyway, she’d made her choice now. She had chosen Will
and the whole urban package that came with him.
     
T WO
    Lydia Littlewood leaned back into the seat of the train and pulled her coat (Nicole Farhi, a classic wrap) more tightly around her. The window wouldn’t shut, and the wind
whistled into the tatty, half-empty carriage. This country was a disgrace with its third-world transport system. Expensive, too: it had cost her an arm and a leg to take a day return to Oxford and
put in an appearance — and a much-needed dose of glamour — at Miss Lancaster’s memorial service.
    It had been worth every penny though. The sight of all those dowdy academics made her realise how right she had been to turn down the chance of post-graduate research. Not for her a lifetime
dressed in library clothes, shuffling around in an old cardi and a depressing pair of tan lace-ups. Lesbian shoes, she called them. Not lesbian shoes in the modern sense, those clumpy black
fashion-statements of political indignation. But lesbian in that faded blue-stocking way of marriage being out of bounds to a woman with a mind. It was hard to imagine now that she might have been
a research fellow, with all its mannish overtones.
    No, she had done well to turn her back on the groves of academe. She lacked the gnat-sized vision required for the work of a scholar. How could you spend years of your life — the only life
you had — poring over the minute details of a medieval French manuscript and speculating on what might have been written on the bit of it that had broken off? How unspeakably dull was that?
Far better her own giddy existence in the magazine world, fluttering like an exotic butterfly from one colourful story to the next.
    There had been a few other high-flyers at the memorial service – it wasn’t entirely wall-to-wall pedants. You could tell the ones who had made something of themselves by the way they
glanced swiftly at their watches, and scanned the church with a professional eye, making a mental note of those worth talking to after the service. She had managed to touch base with one or two
useful contacts, which was the whole purpose of these events. Funerals were for grieving, but memorial services were different. They were for reflecting on a life well lived (you didn’t get
one if you were a complete nobody) and lent themselves to networking. There was one girl there she remembered from school who had done terribly well and was now practically running Condé
Nast. She’d mentioned a school reunion that was taking place next week, and Lydia fully intended to go along. Her Essex roots weren’t something she liked to make a song and dance
about, but she’d make an exception for Condé Nast. Jane should come along too, get out of her rut for a change.
    It was a shame that Jane had missed the memorial service, but Lydia wasn’t surprised. You only wanted to be seen at these public functions if you were feeling good about yourself. And
since Jane had given up her proper job in favour of a joyless life of working at home, she seemed reluctant to go anywhere.
    Working at home. A slow death. Lydia had joked to Jane once that she was like the miller’s daughter in Rumpelstiltskin. Instead of having a roomful of straw to spin into gold, she had a
heap of French manuscripts to turn into tuneful English prose. Locked up with her laptop by the cruel Svengali that was Will.
    She would ring Jane now, tell her about the service, and see if she could be persuaded to show up next week. No doubt she would be hunched behind her computer, in that messy basement room, while
Will was lording it upstairs in his stupidly named galleria. She was probably wearing library clothes, too, come to