Harriet felt a great wave of relief, then felt guilty. One really shouldn’t contemplate losing one’s virginity to someone one felt relieved one wasn’t going to see. Virginity should be lost gloriously. Geoffrey wasn’t glorious, just solid and very, very persistent.

Now that he wasn’t coming down, she could lapse a bit, and not bother about dieting until Monday. She opened a tin of baked beans and put a slice of toast under the grill. After her tutorial with Theo, she could go to the library and get out a couple of trashy novels — she deserved a break after all that Shakespeare — and later go to the new Robert Redford film, and see it round twice, and eat a whole bar of Crunchie, and perhaps an ice-cream too. The weekend stretched out like the snow beginning to cover the lawn.

After eating every baked bean she felt fat, and decided to wash her hair in Theo Dutton’s honour. There was no shower in the bathroom. It was either a question of scalding your head under the hot tap or freezing under the cold, which was much colder because of the snow.

As she alternately froze and scalded she pondered once more the problem of her virginity. All her friends were sleeping with their boyfriends, and she suspected that if she’d really fancied Geoffrey she’d have succumbed to him months ago. If Robert Redford, for example, came to Oxford in a play and bumped into her outside the theatre or met her at a party, she’d be his in a trice. She was conscious of so much love welling up inside her. If only she were beautiful and not so shy, she might attract some beautiful man to give it to. She couldn’t be bothered putting conditioner on her hair after she’d washed it. Theo wasn’t that attractive.