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magazine. And, oh God, would Heather relax so thoroughly that she would actually sit in her stockinged feet as she was doing now?
    Adam looked out of the train window, and fixed his face in what he hoped was a calm, pleasant expression while he tried to work out some of the more glaring problems which faced him at the weekend. He had explained to Heather that there could be no question of sharing a bed under his mother’s roof. She had accepted it good-naturedly.
    ‘No point in terrorising the poor old darling is there? I’ll wait until they’ve all had their Ovaltine then I’ll slip along to wherever you are.’
    He had even managed to tell her that this would not do either. He painted a picture of a home with three women, Mother, Louise and old Elsie; this was the first time any guest had been invited to stay; there would be enormous excitement. There would be amazing scrutiny. Heather had sounded disbelieving but shrugged.
    ‘Well, two nights’ denial won’t kill us.’
    Adam had read a lot about love before he had metHeather. He knew only too well that love was often unreturned – as in the case of his loving Jane Fonda for a while. She had simply been unaware of his existence. And nearer home there had been a severe case of unreturned love when he had yearned for that stuck-up girl in the dramatic society. Of course, he too had been loved, by that mousey friend of Louise’s; the quiet little girl with the irritating cough and nervous laugh. She had loved Adam for a bit and was always pretending that she had been given two theatre tickets and asking him would he like to come to plays with her. He hadn’t loved her even a little bit.
    Heather was his first experience of Real Love, and Adam frowned as he looked into people’s houses from the train window. Real love often ran into problems, well, from Romeo and Juliet onwards. There were cases of families refusing to countenance young lovers. He didn’t think this would happen at home. Mother and Louise wouldn’t summon old Elsie from the kitchen and face him with an ultimatum. It would be very different and much harder to take . . . they would laugh at Heather, and ridicule his taste. In little ways they would call attention to her shortcomings; they would assume that she was a tasteless little dalliance on his part. They couldn’t know that he loved her and wanted her more than he had ever wanted anything in his life.
    He moved her feet slightly, she looked up and smiled at him over her torrid magazine.
    ‘Dreaming?’ she asked him affectionately.
    ‘A bit,’ he said and felt a wave of disloyalty flooding him. Love wasn’t meant to be like this, it had nothing to do with trying to get two sets of people to make allowances, to change, to bend in order to accommodate each other. Love was meant to be straightforward. If things got in the way of love, then the Lover had to remove them, honestly and with integrity and dignity. The Lover wasn’t meant to sit gnawing his fingers about the confrontation of those that he loved.
    He had known Heather for a year and he had loved her for eight months, but this was the first time he had ever raised enough courage to take her home for a weekend. It hadn’t been easy.
    ‘But of course you can have a friend to stay, darling,’ Mother had said. ‘Who is he? Anyone we know?’ Mother had an idea that she might know anyone of substance in London. Among the twelve million people Adam could meet, she felt sure that the one chosen to be a friend might be someone she knew.
    ‘A girl. How dramatic!’ screamed Louise pretending to be a Victorian Lady overcome with shock. Adam could have wrung her neck with pleasure. ‘Is she a débutante? Do tell, do tell.’
    Adam had explained that Heather had a bed-sitting-room in the same house in Islington. He did not go into the fact that for the past few months theyactually shared the same bed-sitting-room so as to save rent. To the eager faces of Mother and Louise, and of Elsie