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And she knew it simply wasn't sensible to be standing in the street under the church tower at Cornmarket, saying his name, but she couldn't remember where it was that she was supposed to be going, or which way she should walk.

She heard her name being called and turned to see her cousin galumphing along the pavement. He was red-faced with cold. A fellow behind him was trying to follow Basil's sudden, erratic path.

‘Grief, old girl. What are you doing standing there?' said Basil. ‘You look frozen. Come on, we're going to find a cup of tea.'

She started blubbing, and he pulled her into the alleyways of the covered market, past the earthy bags of potatoes, and the sawdust and blood of the meat stall, into a glassed-in café full of steam and wet coats. His friend queued at the counter and bought strong tea. They tried to get her to eat a rock cake, for breakfast.

She thought, I will do this, and she was, after a few loud blows into her hanky, even ready to be impressive, since this was Oxford, and they were Oxford students, even if they were from her younger cousin's rather minor public school. So she rallied and thought of something intelligent to say about the Sheridan play.

‘You must come, darlings, both of you. The Drama Soc's putting on
School for Scandal
in the quad at Christchurch.' And then she almost started up again, because last year she and Richard had watched
A Midsummer Night's Dream
there.

The boy Basil had dragged along had been nodding intently to everything she said – was he quite all right? When the tears started rolling again he watched her like a big dog watching the distress of humans, puzzled but mutely attuned. Her handkerchief was now sodden and limp. He fished out a big folded handkerchief that was evidently used to blot his ink pen, but it was dry and smelled cleanly of some strange cologne. Finely stitched little initials were embroidered in the corner. It was made of thick cotton, not an English handkerchief somehow.

‘Well, I think Richard's a fool to pass up on a strapping specimen of a girl like you, don't you think so, Ralph? The rotter had all but proposed, he was so smitten, and then his rather grand mother comes along and says Alice here won't do. So then he goes cold and it's all off. Shocking way to carry on.'

‘It was a mutual decision,' Alice told him. ‘You do say the most awful guff, Basil.'

She was remembering why she didn't spend more time with Basil: he had a way of ploughing on and saying the most excruciatingly embarrassing thing he could – the very thing you should never say – and all with no sense of shame, just stating the obvious. A visit to Basil always risked some cheerful little put-down.

‘And she's frightfully cultured, you know,' Basil went on. ‘Ever so into music and theatre and all that arty stuff, aren't you, old thing?'

She glanced over at his friend, wishing Basil would shut up now. But now his friend wasn't paying attention. He pulled out a fob watch and looked worried. ‘I should be at the station, meeting Mama,' he said. She looked at the wet ball of linen. ‘No, keep the hanky. It's not
much of a gift. Or perhaps you could give it back to me some time. I could come and get it, if I may?'

‘I'm sorry, what did you say your name was?'

‘Ralph. Actually, we have met before. In your garden.'

‘Really?'

‘Don't you remember? I came to tea, at the end of last summer. We played tennis. I used to room with your brothers? We shared a study at Repton.'

She recalled the ring of tall adolescent boys, the pimples and the shirt sweat, the impenetrable school jokes. Gawky and angular they carried the ammonia whiff of chrysalises about to undergo a transformation into some higher element of masculine entitlement. She recalled Mummy pouring tea, a game of doubles on the court under a summer wind, the funny boy from Spain quietly watching them. Was this the same boy? She hadn't paid much attention.

‘So you're at school with Neville and Phillip?'

‘Not any more. I've just come up to Oxford to do Responsions. Really crossing my fingers that I'm going to get in. Damn, I'd really love to stay and chat some more but Mama's found a flat to rent in Oxford for a while, and oh, she'll be at the station and quite lost until I get there.'

He was waiting outside the lecture room again. She smiled and shook her head. He must be rather lonely to seek out her company so much, or else he had some kind of crush on her, which was sweet really because he was so much younger, two years at least. When he saw her coming down the steps of the building he came forward in his awkward way, nothing elegant or refined but like some enormous puppy, waving both of his two large hands at her. Either he didn't know how things were done, or he just didn't care. For some reason,
as a greeting, he gave her an enormous hug that almost, she was sure of it, broke one of her ribs.

‘I've found a place that does real hot chocolate.'

‘Honestly, Ralph, most people drink cocoa at bedtime, not in the middle of the afternoon.'

‘No, no, I don't mean that watery boarding school swill. No, this is thick and tastes like heaven, and the café owner will only make it for me because I can talk with him in Spanish. And for you. He says he'll make it for you.'

So she found herself in a tiny upstairs tea room in Turl Street. The Spanish family all thought of some reason to come over to their table one by one and stare at her with interest.

‘What have you been telling these poor people?'

He smiled back at her, waiting for her to get the punchline of some joke. She fiddled with the spoon.

‘And how is your mother, Ralph?'

‘Not so good today. She gets frightful headaches. She's so cheerful and always thinking of me when I go back to the little flat she's rented, but I know she's given up a lot to be here with me. She's missing my stepfather a lot. But his job is back in Madrid, at the bank, so.'

‘I'm sure he misses you both too.'

‘I think he's quite happy where he is really, quite a cushy number, away from the war, away from the snow. Then today a parcel arrives. The funniest thing. Woollen vests and long johns that he's had made in Madrid. He wrote to say he's worried that I might find it too cold here in the winter.'

‘Oh Ralph, I'm sorry, but I can't stay any longer. I have to go. I'm sure your mama is going to be fine, you know. The thing is, it can be lonely in Oxford, but you really have to stop waiting for me outside lectures and so on. You need friends your own age.'

She stood up and slung her bag over her shoulder, but he grabbed at her arm.

‘Wait. I get my results in a few days. I don't expect I'll get in, I'm not brainy and stuff like you, but if I do get in will you come out with me?'

‘On some kind of date?'

‘Yes. No. I don't mind. I'd just like you to come out with me, for dinner.'

Honestly, she'd no idea why she said yes. She was quite frankly nervous about how he would look. Ralph had longish hair that was potentially floppy and arty in the way of a bright young thing, posed and aloof, in a photo by Cecil Beaton, but which always managed to stick out stiffly to one side. His jacket slid off one shoulder in a messy way. He had a long, strong nose. He simply didn't look, well, English.

But she had agreed to go, and now she was taking out the wretched green dress that she and Mary had spent hours sewing on the Singer treadle, ready for the call-up to a New Year's party with Richard. Just looking at it now made her feel sick with something like grief or shame. Yes, that was it, shame.

How naive she'd been. No way back now to that blindly hopeful girl of last term, cycling the roundabout near Magdalen Bridge where the punts clustered under the stone arches. She'd cycled past the shop that sold formal eveningwear, and smiled. Her own dress now hung ready and waiting inside her wardrobe. Richard had mentioned the New Year's ball that was held each year by the Mountfords, old family friends of his who had a pile near Oxford. She'd understood that this year she was going to go with him to the glittering event at Garstang House. She pictured Richard's face when he saw her in the green silk sheath. Another little victory on the quest to be good enough for Richard. Even Richard's mother had to approve of a dress like this.

She could still feel the flush reddening her neck each time she recalled the awful moments of the weekend at Amforth with his mother.

On that second visit with Richard there had been no private, magical dinner in the vast and candlelit dining room, and certainly no secret tryst in the bedroom with the blue silk walls.

It had been early autumn and already cold; the mausoleum of a building sucked all heat towards the ornate plaster ceilings; her room, away at the top of the house, had freezing bed sheets and an icy bathroom.

After a stiffly formal tea with his mother and sisters Alice had gone upstairs to change. Supper was at seven. She dressed, did her hair, twice, pinned a brooch to the ruffles on the neckline of her dress, puffed out the gathers on the sleeves, and then sat and waited, watching the clock. She was too nervous to read. Up in her bedroom on the third floor she could hear no other sounds from the house, and had no idea of what the others were doing. Feeling ready and a little excited she decided to go down ten minutes early. If she was too early she could melt into another room for a while.

She heard the thick noise of raised voices and found a crush of people in the large drawing room that overlooked the park.

‘I was just going to send a search party up for you,' said Richard grasping her elbow. ‘Papa takes it amiss I'm afraid if people are late, don't you see?'

‘But you said seven.'

‘And cocktails first. I thought you'd realise.'

But it was a simple misunderstanding. Alice smiled, still felt confident, a strong sense of inner strength that she knew, given time, Richard's people would see and value. After all, all this superficial glamour counted for so little in the real scheme of things.

‘And such a very pretty dress,' Richard's mother said carefully when Richard led her over. Alice had glowed at the compliment.

‘Alice's people are from Derbyshire,' offered Richard.

‘Do you know the Devonshires?' said the woman next to Richard's mother.

‘No.'

‘Alice's people live in Buxton.'

‘Ah.'

‘Yes, my father has shoe factories in the area.'

A silence as both women looked at her and smiled. ‘How very interesting,' said Richard's mother. ‘Richard dear, have you got a drink for your friend?'

He fetched her champagne. It was delicious, the bubbles fizzing as she drank. Two tall and exceptionally slim girls approached.

‘So you're Alice,' said the first. The note of surprise in her voice seemed positively rude.

Alice hadn't packed a long dress for dinner. That had been a mistake. She was furious that Richard hadn't warned her. The other girls, friends of Richard's mother, wore long sheaths of bias cut silk that had definitely not been sewn by Maudey's niece from a pattern bought in Dempsey's. They had perfect lipstick and polished hair. She felt the expanses of her nyloned ankles and shins girlish and monstrous. Why had she thought ruffles a good idea?

She left Amforth House wiser. Her accent, her vocabulary, her waist, her frizzy hair, all needed improving; she saw that now. But next time she was invited to Amforth she'd do it all so much better – now that she understood there was another way, the correct way. Sailing along through Oxford on her bike like a questing knight, she'd been humbled but ready for the challenge, happily secure in the knowledge that Richard and she could overcome any obstacle.

She was surprised when Michaelmas term came and went and he stopped speaking of them going to the Mountford's New Year's ball. When she finally plucked up the courage and mentioned it before
they went down for Christmas he'd looked surprised. Oh that. Not happening this year, pookums. Not with the war on, he'd told her. And anyway he had to go north to visit a very dull and aged relative. Sorry pookums. There'd be another year, other parties.

When she arrived back after the Christmas break, Richard had already been there for a week, studying hard for exams. He met her at the station and they fell into their old ways of spending every minute they could together. Three weeks after Epiphany, and she was sitting in Christchurch Cathedral where Richard sang each week as a choral scholar. The winter sun was making an effort to penetrate the chill inside the cathedral as Alice listened to Richard's baritone, quite distinct, as the choir sang ‘Ave Verum Corpus'. She thought how in Oxford you felt so much closer to God in church, more than she had ever felt in the earnest red-brick services with their plodding hymns in their suburban church. And Richard had agreed with her, that when you both feel closer to God, then you feel so much closer to each other. There was a smell of damp stone, tinged with wine. The Bishop of Oxford was raising his arms before the altar.