‘Why?’ he said, smiling round at all of them.
‘Why don’t you come with us?’
‘D’you all really mean it?’ he said, ‘well, yes, I might.’
‘That’s fixed then,’ said Max and fixed it was.
So for anything in the world, it seemed to Julia, it was most like that afternoon when Miss Fellowes had said let’s take the child to a matinee, when she had never yet gone to the theatre, it was so wonderful to see Max planning as he must be doing, to keep Amabel occupied with someone for herself. So like when you were small and they brought children over to play with you and you wanted to play on your own then someone, as they hardly ever did, came along and took them off so you could do what you wanted. And as she hoped this party would be, if she could get a hold of Max, it would be as though she could take him back into her life from where it had started and show it to him for them to share in a much more exciting thing of their own, artichokes, pigeons and all, she thought and laughed aloud.
‘But weren’t you going anywhere?’ Amabel said to Richard, only she looked at Max.
‘I can go where I was going afterwards,’ he said to all of them and smiled.
London,
1931–1938