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The regime at Hanover Terrace had come to an end; Nanny went to look after the Sutherlands’ baby, and Nic went to a small boarding-school called St David’s near Egham. I’d have
liked her to go to St Paul’s where she would have been a day girl, but the travelling every day and the fairly heavy schedule the school imposed seemed too much for her at that age. I
remembered my brief and awful time at Graham Street, and didn’t want her to spend two hours in buses every day. Pete and Phil – with whom all these decisions were made – agreed
that St David’s seemed a good choice. It was small, and each child had a room of its own. Pete had given Nic a pony that was kept at Slimbridge with him and this was the love of her life.

I was much less sure than she about the love of
my
life. My relationship with Michael was the same – he rang me often, and occasionally wrote me notes in his tiny beetle writing. He
never said he loved me, and I never asked him. But I
wanted
him to love me, hoarded the slightest sign of affection or interest, and I told myself – and others – that I loved
him. However, although I thought ceaselessly about him, I don’t think I thought honestly. I saw it all through a romantic haze, where I, the good mistress, was being short-changed on
love.

To some extent, this might have been true. Michael didn’t find it easy to talk about anything that he felt. Like so many public-school boys, he’d learned the hard way to keep his
feelings to himself, and by the time he was forty, lack of practice had taken its toll. Although a glamorous figure, dark, very handsome with bright brown eyes that could gleam conspiratorially
when he was amused –
which was often – or become like flat pebbles when he was angry, and in spite of a great deal of charm, I think he was basically unsure of
himself. Perhaps he felt that he wasn’t what he wished to be.

He loved good writing, particularly poetry, and used to try his hand at it, in a rather jokey way to ensure that no one thought he took himself seriously. He loved painting and bought both
pictures and sculptures, and he loved the company of artists and often helped beginners when he thought well of them. He had a very low boredom threshold and had no interest in sport or games. He
loved food and wine, and although I didn’t notice it when I first knew him, he came to enjoy music.

I’d been with Michael for three years and had begun to feel that things might remain the same for ever. This implies that I was dissatisfied, and although I found it difficult to define
exactly what was wrong, I knew that something was. The restrictions that almost all affairs with married people impose were there. I couldn’t have holidays with him. I couldn’t be in
more than a very small part of his life. The partial secrecy was very trying, as I was cut off from a great deal else of ordinary social life. ‘Do you want to marry?’ Audrey asked me
– her mind was very much running upon marriage.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘In any case, I can’t. He
is
married.’ But the question, and my answer, nagged me.

I was thirty in the spring of 1953 when my older brother invited me to go with him to France and Italy in his Lotus car, the fifteenth to be built.

Back in 1946, Robin and his wife had returned from Arizona where their efforts to make a living had failed. Robin had rejoined the family firm and they had had a daughter, Claire. Then
Robin’s wife left him, with the three-year-old child, whom my mother took on. He badly needed a holiday, and I was delighted to go with him. Michael then suggested that, after two weeks with
Robin, I should join one of his partners in the South of France for a further
two weeks. ‘Paul is having a bad time with his marriage. He needs cheering up.’
I’d got to know Paul Bowman over the years, as I’d gradually got to know most of the partners. Like Michael, he was an old Etonian, but he’d led a starry life there – a
member of Pop, or the Etonian equivalent of being a prefect, and good at everything. He’d had a distinguished war, been made a major at twenty-one and soon afterwards he married an actress
far older than he and had a daughter with her. Paul was charming, extremely attractive, and I sensed Michael admired him very much. This was all I knew about him. It didn’t strike me as odd
that Michael should make this suggestion – after all, he’d sent me to Monte Carlo with Roy – so I agreed. It was a wonderful thought that I was to have a really long holiday.

The holiday with Robin was tremendously enjoyable. The little Lotus, silver and open, was an exciting car. Robin was running it in, which meant it wasn’t to exceed seventy miles an hour,
but it did that everywhere. We had one or two adventures. One late afternoon, when we were in France and on our way to Italy, we realized there was a strike and that the petrol stations were all
shut. Robin wasn’t daunted. There
might
turn out to be one that was open, on the other hand we
might
just have enough petrol to get into Italy where we could fill up. There
wasn’t, and we didn’t. We ground to a halt at about ten o’clock that evening on a very minor country road – nowhere.

As we got out to survey the scene, another car drew up behind us, out of which climbed a charming man who asked if he could help. Robin’s French wasn’t much better than mine, but he
managed to explain our problem. ‘Come with me,’ the man said. He would put us up for the night, bring us petrol in the morning and all would be well. Somehow, he assumed that we were
married, and Robin and I – very tired and feeble – failed to disillusion him in time. We drove up to what we could see, even in the dark, was a large house – a château. We
were offered food and drink, and a room with a very small double bed, in which we spent a fairly restless night.

In the morning, we found ourselves sitting round an enormous dining-room table, with Monsieur and Madame and eight children of different sizes but otherwise identical –
like a set of ring spanners. Our enjoyment of all this was spoiled by the lie we’d let by. I felt if we had admitted to not being married and said we were siblings they’d simply not
believe us. Silly, no doubt, but there was a strong Catholic atmosphere. They were charmingly generous, refused to let us pay for the petrol that Monsieur transported in a can the next day. All we
could do was thank them and take their name and address. Later we both wrote to thank them again for their great kindness.

The Italians adored the Lotus. Everywhere we stopped, a crowd of people seemed to come from nowhere to stroke it and exclaim at its beauty. We had one row in the car when we lost our way in
Milan. I read the map wrongly and argued about it, and for half an hour we were back in our childhood, but we got over it.

We ended up in St-Tropez, and in the village street I met a lady I’d known slightly in London – Ruth de Lichtenburg. She had a house there, she said, and invited us to have a drink
with her family that evening. We went. Ruth, whose husband, a painter, had died rescuing his two daughters from a fire, had lived in their house throughout the war with her mother-in-law and her
two daughters. She’d worked for the Resistance. The daughters were there: the fair one a scientist, the dark younger one a ballet dancer. Robin fell at once for the dancer, whose name was
Nadia. The next day, however, he had to drive back to London, having deposited me at the hotel where I was to meet Paul.

Two weeks ensued, which, looking back on them, were the most sybaritic of my life. The coast had not then been built up and populated as it is now. There were plenty of little coves where we
could bathe, without other people, in a clear, clean, warm sea. There were restaurants by the beaches, with mattresses and umbrellas for hire, and delicious
hors d’oeuvres
lunches were
available. I, used to English summers in London and English food that was uniformly
dull, was intoxicated by these continuous pleasures. At night we showered and dressed and
went out to dine and dance in the warm velvet air. To be asked what I wanted to do, to choose equally with Paul where we’d go and what we’d do, was also a new and delightful experience.
His consideration charmed me, but I was altogether charmed, was completely absorbed by our mutual enjoyment, and the fast-growing consciousness of mutual attraction. To begin with, I had qualms of
guilt and anxiety about Michael.

And then, half-way through the first week, lying sleepless in my room, wishing that Paul was there and telling myself I shouldn’t, I remembered the earlier trip to Monte Carlo with Roy.
Michael had sent me on that. Roy’s affair had broken down. And now Michael had sent me on this holiday with Paul whose marriage was breaking – had already broken – down. Perhaps
he wanted rid of me, but couldn’t face it unless I was hitched up with someone else. At that moment, there was a tap on the door. It was Paul, asking if he might come in. Yes, he might. Much
later, when we were lying in the narrow bed, he said, ‘You can’t imagine how long I’ve wanted to do this.’

‘Before this holiday?’

‘Long before.’

So there we were. Everything went our way. Paul had a rich, rather shady acquaintance, who had a large villa in the hills above Nice. We were invited for lunch and a swim in his pool, and at the
end of the afternoon he offered us a small house in his garden for as long as we liked.

Trying to look back on those short, heady ten days, I can’t honestly recall my true feelings. Again I certainly thought I was in love with Paul, and I was entranced that he should be in
love with me. He was, or he seemed at the time, to be deeply affectionate in a way that I hadn’t encountered for years. He was honourable – he never once said anything bad about his
wife. He was devoted to his daughter, who was then about five. He was wonderfully unconscious about his appearance and the effect it made. So we spent ten
hot, golden days as
though they would go on for ever, as though there was no life outside or beyond them. It wasn’t until our last evening that we began to face reality. Tomorrow we’d see Michael and would
have to tell him.

‘Perhaps he won’t really mind,’ I said.

‘I rather think he will. You realize, don’t you, that I won’t be able to marry you for some time?’ I hadn’t thought that he wanted to marry me. ‘Of course
that plan is slightly dependent on how you feel about it. All I want to do is influence you unduly.’

‘You have,’ I said. ‘I should love to marry you.’

Michael met us at the airport. Neither of us had expected him. He was in very good spirits, and said he’d drop Paul off at his house then take me on.

As soon as we got to Blandford Street, I told him, and saw his eyes become like pebbles in a face blanched with anger. He was furiously angry, at first inveighing against Paul for playing such a
dirty trick. I said I was in it too, that it was more serious than a dirty trick, and that we were going to marry. ‘I’ll put a stop to
that
,’ he said. ‘That’s
the last thing you’ll do.’ There was a good deal more of this before he slammed out of the house. I said all the hopeless things: I was sorry, there’d been no planning, but of
course it was useless.

The next evening Paul came to see me. ‘We need two rather large gin and tonics,’ he said. ‘I’ve got some bad news.’ Michael had sacked him – he had been out
of the firm from eleven that morning. I could see that this was bad, but not how bad. I supposed it might have been difficult to go on working with Michael and he answered that it might be
marginally more difficult not having a job. Later, I asked if he wanted to change his mind. ‘Good Lord,
no
! Nothing would make me want to do that.’ I asked him if he wanted to
come and live at Blandford Street, and he said, no, he thought that would be unwise. He would stay with friends, and another friend would lend him a flat where we could meet. ‘Rather an
extraordinary place,’ he added.

It was. It was in a mews off Park Lane, pitch dark and packed
with gnomes. There were imitation pools made with mirror glass round which these grinning dwarfs eternally
fished. There were very small ones on every shelf and large ones that sat in chairs. The lamps were dim and coloured red or green and filled the place with an unearthly glow. Paul referred to the
owner as ‘he’, but I think it was some high-class prostitute’s flat. Paul’s connection with tarts wasn’t known to me then. It didn’t even dawn on me when,
mysteriously, we both got crabs. This horrified me – I’d never even heard of them before, but when I asked how on earth I could have got them he said he couldn’t imagine. We got
over that.

Audrey told me that Michael had asked his cousin Jeremy to reason with me to leave Paul, but that he’d refused. Michael then sent his partner along, a man packed with unreliable charm who
had a reputation for getting anyone to do anything. He failed. Paul’s financial troubles had simply stiffened my resolve to stay with him. He was trying to get another job and not succeeding.
He’d been to lawyers, who said I’d have to be cited in the divorce. Paul took me to see them. There were two of them. They chose a hotel in Brighton, and deliberated with each
other.

‘The third floor has been found to be reliable, hasn’t it, Mr Smith?’

‘We’ve never had any trouble with it. It would be helpful if the lady would draw
attention
to herself. Like spilling the coffee-pot over the bedclothes . . . ‘

‘Or dropping a vase full of blooms on the carpet,’ said the other. ‘Something of that nature.’

‘Would you rather drop or spill?’ Paul said when we’d rid ourselves of hysterical laughter in the taxi. ‘Oh, darling, I feel awful dragging you through all
this.’

‘Well, it’s true, isn’t it? It is what we’re doing.’ So we went through it all.

Sometimes, at weekends, we went to stay with Michael Ayrton, the neo-Romantic artist and sculptor, and Elisabeth, his wife, in their house in Essex. Michael was an old friend, he liked Paul and
it was lovely to be with friends who accepted us without any fuss.

All these things happened over a period of about three months during which I discovered I was pregnant. Paul was clearly confounded by this, and said he’d fix it.
‘We can have children when we’re married,’ he said, ‘lots of them.’ This comforted me and I was surprised that it did. My feelings about having children had changed. I
still felt inadequate, afraid I wouldn’t make a good job of it, but now I wanted another chance. This was clearly not the moment.