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Greywell, Stormont Road, London.

Mr and Mrs Martin Hewetson request the pleasure of …………………………………………………………………………………………………… to join them at their home for a musical evening followed by supper to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of their marriage. Dress informal.

The evening had been a success, thank the Lord. Otis, knowing what she needed to do to please her mother, had willingly agreed to every one of her whims both as to her dress and the available men on whom she should dance a little attention. Being Otis, that dancing was a perfunctory jig just to show willing.

‘I’ll be nice to them, Ma. I really don’t mind.’

‘Otis, when you are co-operative, I always suspect the worst.’

‘I want your celebration to be so splendid that none of your acquaintances will ever have done better.’

‘Well, at least be pleasant to Mr Cordwallis.’

‘I will, Ma. He will go away believing that I am his greatest admirer, and that if his Party would only give women the vote, then I should give him mine at the next election.’

‘Otis, you must absolutely not bring votes into the conversation.’

And Otis had not done so. She had been a model daughter.

Now that it was finished, the debris of the celebration supper cleared and the hired staff gone, Otis sat, as she liked to do, drinking a nightcap with her father. He rose from his seat and went to ponder over the array of silver-wear displayed on a chiffonier.

‘Very nice items, Otis, don’t you think?’

‘Oh, very. But whatever shall you do with a silver sealing-wax box concealed in a coach and horses, and Ma with a scissors and thimble set – I never saw Ma use a thimble in her life.’

Martin Hewetson grinned at his daughter. She was a delight to him. Not only had she turned out to be intelligent and beautiful, but she had a wicked sense of humour to match his own. To think that there had been a time when he had wished that she had been a boy. Boys might join one in one’s profession but, as he had seen in other families, once they left home, they returned only as a duty, whereas Otis, although she had caused such upheaval at the time by going to live under another roof, still had Greywell as her home.

Quite obviously men were attracted by her looks and intrigued by her self-assured manner – certainly Cordwallis had been impressed. Equally obviously Otis liked the company of men. It was difficult for a father to judge these things, but he felt that she had inherited a certain tendency to strong emotion from Em, and perhaps a liberal attitude from himself. An explosive combination but, when the right man came along, they were traits that ought to bring happiness in one with such a generous nature as Otis. What was she now, twenty-three? Only a matter of time before some young man would strike a spark to her fuse and she would be off like a shilling rocket. How happy Em would be in ruffled silk with roses in her hat, weeping gracefully. How she longed to sacrifice her only daughter at the altar of marriage, as she would put it.

Martin wished fervently that it had been possible for him to tell Otis what was going through his mind.

‘Your ma will lay out the scissors and thimble whenever the giver of that particular gift is about to visit. It is not so much the small gifts that concern me but…’ He gave her a purse-lipped smile.

‘The windmill!’ In unison. And in unison they laughed explosively and on the edge of hysteria or intoxication, at the monstrous gift that had no purpose except to be its incomprehensible and hideous self

‘Oh Pa, it’s no wonder I find it difficult to be serious about some of the things that matter so much to some people.’ She put her arms about him and pressed her cheek to his. ‘And you, my dear pa… you are such a nice sort of person.’

‘Nonsense, child.’ He gently patted her back as he had done many times over the years.

Because he was such a nice sort of person, and because she loved him so much, beneath the display of gaiety she had so consummately portrayed all evening, Otis was in torment. She could think of nothing worse that she could do than to betray his trust. She was going away but she could not tell him. After tonight…

‘Pa. I hope you won’t mind, but I am going back to Islington tonight.’

‘But it is so late.’

‘There are quite a few things I have to do.’

‘Always work, Otis. Leave time for other things.’

‘I’m sorry, Pa. It will make things easier for me if I go back tonight.’

‘But I have given Dawkins the evening off and you cannot possibly go in a hired cab at this hour. If you must go then I shall come with you.’

Otis knew that it was no use arguing. He would come and she would have to keep going cheerfully.

He came back from telling Em, putting on an overcoat and carrying a travel-rug and one of Otis’s tweeds. ‘Never mind what you look like, this is warm.’

In the chilly cab they sat close.

‘Your mother wasn’t pleased.’

‘You shouldn’t have told her.’

‘How could I go out without doing so?’

‘Oh dear Pa, I’m such a nuisance to you both. I really do wish that I could be what you and Ma want.’

‘What I want is what I have. Two beautiful, healthy women.’ He squeezed her hand and kept hold of it. ‘Both of whom can twist me around their little fingers.’

Otis fell silent, staring out of the cab window at the quiet roads of night-time Lavender Hill, and listening to the steady clop of the horse’s hooves.

‘Do you want to tell me, Otis?’

‘Tell what?’

‘I don’t know.’

She should have known that she could not hide behind gaiety. When she was a child she had believed that he possessed the ability to know what she was thinking, until she realized that he was so attuned to her moods that he could detect any change.

When he held her hand between his two, she realized that hers was cold and stiff with tension.

She longed to tell him. About Jack, about Danny Turner, about what they had arranged – but she knew the rules. Only the couriers and the escapee must know. She thought that she knew her pa, but he might easily do something uncharacteristic in his worry over her involvement in such a scheme.

‘You know that you can trust me with any secret, Otis.’

She still did not respond.

‘I can’t bear knowing that you have something on your mind that I cannot help put right for you.’

‘You have to let me go, Pa.’

‘Dear child, I let you go three years back. It is your mother…’

‘No, Pa. You have given me the means to be free – the chance to study at college, your support when I wanted to teach and your marvellous lack of criticism – but you haven’t let me go as you would if I were your son.’

Now it was his turn to fall silent. Then he said, ‘Is it to do with Jack Moth?’

‘Jack?’

‘He has been in touch with me, in a professional way.’

‘I know that he was settling some of his affairs. He’s ready to be certified fit for active service again.’

‘You see him then?’

‘He took me out to dinner – you remember?’

‘You realize what a difficult position I am in, of course, knowing his beneficiaries.’

‘I heard from Esther that they have come to some arrangement about Mere.’

Gradually and without difficulty she eased herself out of the quicksand of her guilt. They were not now far from Islington where she could be alone, drop her mask and weep for herself and for him.

For the last half-mile they did not speak, her hand, still lying between her father’s, thawed. The cab drew up before Lou’s unlit shop.

‘You are still happy here?’

‘Very happy indeed, Pa. I like my new school and I am hoping that it will not be long before I am able to work for my Master’s.’

‘Don’t you ever think of what you will miss if you don’t have children of your own?’

‘Yes, Pa. I do. But I put it out of my mind and hope that when women have a say in affairs, then we shall have the same privileges as men. There is no reason why women with children of school age could not be teachers – at least for part of the day.’

‘Who would see to the domestic side of things in Utopia?’

‘I dare say it would be worked out as it has always been in primitive and peasant communities – we should see to it ourselves.’

‘Is that disillusionment, my dear?’

‘I don’t believe that I ever had illusions to start with. It is already a fact of life for some of the women of Islington. They have work inside and out of the home.’

‘Is that what you want?’

‘I don’t know, but I want the opportunity to choose. Goodness, aren’t we getting serious?’

She kissed him, trying to make it her usual affectionate peck and hug.

‘Goodnight, Pa. Thank you for coming with me.’

He tucked the collar of her tweed coat across her bare throat.

‘You wouldn’t think of eloping or any such thing, would you, child?’

‘Eloping? Me, Miss Otis Hewetson BA, twentieth-century career woman, with her own front door.’ Her voice was light with jolly derision. She jangled her keys at him. ‘Can you ever imagine such a thing?’

Martin Hewetson got back into the cab and waited until he saw her door close behind her.

Can you ever imagine such a thing?

Yes. Since he had drawn up the arrangements regarding Mere Meldrum and a brief will which made Otis a beneficiary beyond anything that their youthful friendship warranted – he could imagine just such a thing.