He began to pour out tea.

At twenty-one, Martin was more than old enough to know his own mind, and he was studying art at the Chelsea College of Painting, working in the evenings and weekends. Richard was working at a film studio near London, hoping to write scripts for a living. It was seldom that either came to him for anything, these days; for them both to come at once was rare indeed.

“If it’s no,” Richard said, “you’re in for a shock, Dad.”

Roger sipped his tea.

“Well, one of us is,” he temporized. There was something in their minds he couldn’t guess. It wasn’t April Fool’s Day. It wasn’t his birthday. It wasn’t —

Suddenly, he remembered; it was the first day of the Summer Sales, and Janet had said she wanted to go to Oxford Street. She was desperate for a new Autumn outfit; he must have slept on — but no, it wasn’t too late — just before eight.

“All right,” he said. “Shock me.”

“Mum forgot to get any money out of the bank,” Richard said, “and you’ve only a pound in your wallet. So she’s gone to get a place in the queue at Debb’s, and somehow you have to take her some money.”

“Twenty-four years wed, she complained,” said Scoop, “and she still doesn’t know where you keep your secret hoard. She turned the place upside down.”

“I still keep it at the bank, and she knows it,” Roger said. “I’ll have to change a cheque at a shop on the way.”

It was an empty kind of morning, without Janet; emptier as soon as the boys had left. Boys? And Richard a bare year younger than Martin? He laughed the thought away as he went downstairs to get his own breakfast; but there was instant porridge, bacon and eggs in the frying pan, everything ready for him.

He caught Janet a few yards from the main entrance at Debb’s, one of several hundred women; and once he had put thirty pounds into her hands there was a surge forward as the door opened.