Victoria Station was as busy as usual. By the time the Brighton train arrived there the clock on the station forecourt said twenty to eleven. The ticket collector asked me if he should summon a porter, but I refused, embarrassingly aware that the five pounds David had given me might be the last money I acquired for a long time. So I carried my own case to the taxi rank.

The night was cold, with that smoky edge London air always seems to have. Crowds of men and women, bundled in fur collars and gloves, their breath misting, flowed in and out of the station entrance. Ahead of me in the taxi queue, a couple no older than myself stood close to each other, her arm through his, their faces pink with expectation. Where were they going? Where had they come from? Why were they so happy? I tried not to look at them. The sight of all these people doing whatever they were doing on a normal Saturday night, laughing and talking and being with each other, deepened my already bitterly low mood. I dug my feet into the pavement and my hands into my sleeves and wished to die.

“Where to, miss?”

The young couple had gone off in their taxi, and the next one had drawn up. “Oh … Raleigh Court, Bayswater, please. Number 23.”

The driver hopped out, put my bag in the luggage compartment and hopped back in again, whistling. I thought how uncomplicated being a taxi driver must be, and for a moment I actually envied him. But when the cab swung into the traffic, my envy disappeared. I realized I had never been in a London taxi alone at night before. David had always been there to chain my attention, so I had never been aware of the swarm of motor cars and horse-drawn vehicles, bicycles, motor bicycles, double-decker omnibuses and hackney cabs swirling along the streets. It all looked so higgledy-piggledy, and there were so many lights and conflicting noises, I wondered how the driver could work out what to do and where to go without injuring himself or me. Rounding Hyde Park Corner, I was thrown sideways even though I was holding tightly to the strap above the taxi door.

I am alone, I said to myself. I am grown up. For the first time in my life there is no one to do anything for me; there is only me.

As the taxi slowed down, the driver looked from side to side of a narrow street, searching for number 23. I began to panic slightly. Supposing Aidan was away, or not in, or refused to answer the door?

I leaned forward and spoke to the driver. “Excuse me … could you please wait? The person I am visiting may not be there.”

“Very good, miss.”

In order to deposit my case at Aidan’s door, the driver had to come into the light that shone above it, and I saw for the first time that he was young. I started to envy him again. Much later tonight he would count his takings and go home to his mother or his wife. Tomorrow he would go out, perhaps to a football match. And tomorrow night, if anyone cared to look, they would find him as usual outside Victoria Station, ready for drunks, complainers, arguers… How lucky he was in his ordinariness! As I thanked him I noticed he was quite good-looking. I wondered bleakly if he would ever appear on a newsreel and be “spotted” for the films.

When I rang the doorbell, footsteps sounded inside the building. The taxi driver tipped his cap. “That’ll be one-and-ninepence, miss.”

I gave him two shillings. “Keep the change,” I told him, as I had heard David do. He touched his cap again before he returned to the waiting cab. And at the same moment the door of number 23 opened.

“Good grief!” Aidan stood there with one hand on the door latch and the other in his pocket, his eyebrows in his hair. “Clara?”