Grievance. Marguerite Alexander

and professional lives entirely separate. Martha has sometimes regretted this, feeling that an important part of his life is closed to her, but she recognises in him a deep fear of exposure. To be seen as a husband, a father, a householder, a cat-fancier might compromise the mystique he enjoys in lecture and seminar rooms.

      ‘Well, I thought I might this time.’

      ‘Is that to reassure her or me?’

      Steve smiles tenderly. ‘Martha, you shouldn’t need reassurance. You know that there is nothing I would do knowingly to hurt you. Look, if it’s any comfort, I know what the risks are, and I’ve pretty much made up my mind not to take this any further – not in that direction, at any rate. Why not befriend her? She may well be lonely. And to have her here would erect a barrier as far as I’m concerned. Once she’s met you and the girls, it becomes unthinkable that I should – well, you know what I’m trying to say.’

      ‘You want to be saved from yourself. Well, invite her round, then.’

      

      While Steve is in Primrose Hill, drinking tea with his family, Nora returns alone to the flat in Crouch End that she shares with Phoebe, having made her excuses to the others – Phoebe, Nick, Pete and Annie – not to join them for the post-class cappuccino.

      Although the flat is empty, so for a while she doesn’t have to respect Phoebe’s prior right, as owner, to occupy the public space, Nora isn’t tempted by the empty sitting room and the television set that she could, on this occasion, turn to a channel of her own choosing. Instead, she makes straight for her bedroom, where she drops her bag and jacket before curling up on the bed. This was her habit at home. Over the years she developed a sense of the rest of the house, apart from whatever spot was occupied by Felix, as hostile territory where at any moment she might stumble unwittingly on the landmine of her parents’ many sensitivities. And her need for a refuge has continued.

      Viewed objectively, her life holds more promise at the moment than at any time she can remember. It seems likely that she will achieve all the academic goals she’s set herself, and a bright, if still undefined future should be assured. Nick’s interest in her is clear, a source of secret pleasure when she allows herself the indulgence of daydreaming. She knows that this current state of suspense cannot continue indefinitely, that he’s going to expect more from her than she’s currently able to give, but any other girl would regard this as a blessed state. She’s living in circumstances more comfortable than she thought possible when she first came to London, thanks to an act of generosity she could never have imagined. These are the facts of her immediate situation and, as she lies curled on her bed, she marshals them in her mind to dispel her anxiety.

      The ability to think rationally has always been important to her and, since she was old enough to formulate such an idea, has defined who she is. Powerless as she was at home, the force of reason was her only defence. And while she couldn’t say that it was effective against her parents, who regarded it more as an incitement than as a challenge that they might meet by behaving rationally, it comforted her in the inner recesses of her being. When she planned her escape, the world she envisaged for herself was peopled by paragons who shared her commitment to objective truth.

      If this was the premise by which she decided to live, she has only herself to blame for the anxiety that sent her fleeing from the company of her friends. If she really values the truth, she should have been more open about herself from the beginning. The longer she’s left it, the harder it’s become, and if she were to tell her story now, she would have to explain the reasons for her reticence as well.

      She came to London in the naïve belief that she could reinvent herself. The anguish that drove her from home was in part because the daughter her parents saw bore no relation to the person she knew herself to be. She felt distorted and deformed by them. In London she would take control of her life and of the self she presented to the world.

      She wasn’t so much determinedly suppressing the past, as refusing to be defined by what she had left behind. The mere telling of her story would skew people’s reactions to her. And as she listened to other people talk about their families, her own came to seem grotesque, to the point at which she wondered if she would even be believed. When she rehearsed her story in her own mind, it seemed – to a judgement as fastidious as hers, as alert to genre – like the worst kind of sensationalist fiction. And the longer she left the telling, the more likely it was that her motives, when she finally came to unburden herself, would be misinterpreted. She was so sick of the relish in unearned victimhood she’d seen at home that she shrank from exposing herself to the charge of courting pathos.