I swallowed. 'You harmed me, Kitty. It was you that harmed me.'

'I know it, now. Do you think I don't know it? I feel ashamed to even talk to you. I am so sorry, for what happened.'

'You needn't be sorry now,' I said awkwardly. But she went on as if she had not heard me: that she was so very sorry; that what she had done had been so very wrong. That she was sorry, so sorry . . .

At last, I shook my head. 'Oh!' I said. 'What does all that matter now? It matters nothing!'

'Doesn't it?' she said. I felt my heart begin to hammer. When I did not answer, only continued to stare at her, she took a step towards me and began to talk, very fast and low. 'Oh Nan, so many times I thought about finding you, and planned what I would say When I did. I cannot leave you now without saying it!'

'I don't want to hear it,' I said in sudden terror; I believe I even put my hands to my ears, to try to block out the sound of her murmurs. But she caught at my arm and talked on, into my face.

'You must hear it! You must know. You mustn't think that I did what I did easily, or thoughtlessly. You mustn't think it did not - break my heart.'

'Why did you do it, then?'

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'Because I was a fool! Because I thought my life upon the stage was dearer to me than anything. Because I thought that I would be a star. Because, of course, I did not ever think that I would really, really lose you . . .' She hesitated. Outside the tent the bustle of the day went on: children ran shrieking; stall-holders called and argued; flags and pamphlets fluttered in the May breezes. She took a breath. She said: 'Nan, come back to me.'

Come back to me ... One part of me reached out to her at once, leapt to her like a pin to a magnet; I believe the very same part of me would leap to her again - would go on leaping to her, if she went on asking me, for ever.

Then another part of me remembered, and remembers still. 'Come back to you?' I said. 'With you, still Walter's wife?' 'All that means nothing,' she said quickly. 'There's nothing - like that - between him and me now. If we were only a little careful..."

'Careful!' I said: the word had made me flinch. 'Careful! Careful! That's all I ever had from you. We were so careful, we might as well have been dead!' I shook myself free of her. 'I have a new girl now, who's not ashamed to be my sweetheart.' But Kitty came close, and seized my arm again. That girl with the baby?' she said, nodding back into the tent. 'You don't love her, I can see it in your face. Not as you loved me. Don't you remember how it was? You were mine, before anyone's; you belong with me. You don't belong with her and her sort, talking all this foolish political stuff. Look at your clothes, how plain and cheap they are! Look at these people all about us: you left Whitstable to get away from people such as this!'

I gazed at her for a second in a kind of stupor; then I did as she urged me, and glanced about the tent - at Annie and Miss Raymond; at Ralph, who was still blinking and blushing into Mrs Costello's face; at Nora and Ruth, who stood beside the platform with some other girls I recognised from the Boy in the Boat, hi a chair at the far side of the tent -1 had not noticed her before - sat

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Zena, her arm looped through that of her broad-shouldered sweetheart; close to them stood a couple of Ralph's union friends - they nodded when they saw me looking, and raised a glass. And in the midst of them all, sat Florence. Her head was still bent to where Cyril clutched at it: he had tugged her hair down to her shoulder, and she had raised her hands to pull his fingers free. She was flushed and smiling; but even as she smiled, she lifted her eyes to mine, and I saw tears in them - perhaps, only from Cyril's grasping - and, behind the tears, a kind of bleakness, that I did not think I'd ever seen in them before.

I could not meet her smile with one of my own. But when I turned again to Kitty, my gaze was level; and my voice, when I spoke, was perfectly steady.

'You're wrong,' I said. 'I belong here, now: these are my people. And as for Florence, my sweetheart, I love her more than I can say; and I never realised it, until this moment.'

She let go of my arm and stepped away as if she had been struck. 'You are saying these things to spite me,' she said breathlessly, 'because you are still hurt -'

I shook my head. 'I'm saying these things because they're true. Good-bye, Kitty.'

'Nan!' she cried, as I made to move away from her. I turned back.

'Don't call me that,' I said pettishly. 'No one calls me that now. It ain't my name, and never was.'

She swallowed, then stepped towards me again and said in a lower, chastened tone: 'Nancy, then. Listen to me: I still have all your things. All the things you left at Stamford Hill.'

'I don't want them,' I said at once. 'Keep them, or throw 'em away: I don't care.'

'There are letters, from your family! Your father came to London, looking for you. Even now, they send me letters, asking if I have heard ..."

My father! I had had a vision, on seeing Diana, of myself upon a silken bed. Now, more vividly, I saw my father, in the apron that fell to his boots; I saw my mother, and my brother,

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and Alice. I saw the sea. My eyes began to smart, as if there was salt in them.

'You can send me the letters,' I said thickly: I thought, I'll write, and tell them of Florence. And if they don't care for it -well, at least they'll know that I'm safe, and happy . . .

Now Kitty came nearer, and lowered her voice still further. There's the money, too,' she said. 'We have kept it all. Nan, there's almost seven hundred pounds of yours!'

I shook my head: I had forgotten about the money. 'I have nothing to spend it on,' I said simply. But even as I said it, I remembered Zena, whom I had robbed; and I thought again of Florence - I imagined her dropping seven hundred pounds into the charity boxes of East London, coin by coin.

Would that make her love me, more than Lilian?

'You can send me the money, too,' I said to Kitty at last; and I told her my address, and she nodded, and said she'd remember.

We gazed at one another then. Her lips were damp and slightly parted; and she had paled, so that her freckles showed. Involuntarily I thought back to that night at the Canterbury Palace, when I had met her first and learned I loved her, and she had kissed my hand, and called me 'Mermaid', and thought of me as she should not have. Perhaps the same memory had occurred to her, for now she said, 'Is this how it's to end up, then? Won't you let me see you again; you might come and visit -'

I shook my head. 'Look at me,' I said. 'Look at my hair. What would your neighbours say, if I came visiting you? You'd be too afraid to walk upon the street with me, in case some feller called out!'

She blushed, and her lashes fluttered. 'You have changed,' she said again; and I answered, simply: 'Yes, Kitty, I have.'

She raised her hands to lower her veil. 'Good-bye,' she said.

I nodded. She turned away; and as I stood and watched her, I found that I was aching slightly, as from a thousand fading bruises . . .

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I cannot let you go, I thought, so easily as that! While she was still quite near I took a step into the sunshine, and looked about me. Upon the grass beside the tent there was a kind of wreath or bower ?part of some display that had come loose and been discarded. There were roses on it: I bent and plucked one, and called to a boy who was standing idly by, handed the flower to him and gave him a penny, and told him what I wanted. Then I moved back into the shadows of the tent, behind the wall of sloping canvas, and watched. The boy ran up to Kitty; I saw her turn at his cry, then stoop to hear his message. He held the rose to her, and pointed back to where I stood, concealed. She turned her face towards me, then took the flower; he raced off at once to spend his coin, but she stood quite still, the rose held before her in her clasped, gloved ringers, her veiled head weaving a little as she tried to pick me out. I don't believe she saw me, but she must have guessed that I was watching, for after a minute she gave a kind of nod in my direction - the slightest, saddest, ghostliest of footlight bows. Then she turned; and soon I lost her to the crowd.

I turned then, too, and headed back into the tent. I saw Zena first, making her way out into the sunshine, and then Ralph and Mrs Costello, walking very slowly side by side. I didn't stop to speak to them; I only smiled, and stepped purposefully towards the row of chairs in which I had left Florence.

But when I reached it, Florence was not there. And when I looked around, I could not see her anywhere.

'Annie,' I called - for she and Miss Raymond had drifted over to join the group of toms beside the platform - 'Annie, where's Flo?'

Annie gazed about the tent, then shrugged. 'She was here a minute ago,' she said. 'I didn't see her leave.' There was only one exit from the tent; she must have passed me while I was gazing after Kitty, too preoccupied to notice her . . .

I felt my heart give a lurch: it seemed to me suddenly that if I didn't find Florence at once, I would lose her for ever. I ran

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from the tent into the field, and gazed wildly about me. I recognised Mrs Macey in the crowd, and stepped up to her. Had she seen Florence? She had not. I saw Mrs Fryer again: had she seen Florence? She thought perhaps she had spotted her a moment before, heading off, with the little boy, towards Bethnal Green . . .

I didn't stop to thank her, but hurried away - shouldering my way through the crush of people, stumbling and cursing and sweating with panic and haste. I passed the Shafts stall again - did not turn my head, this time, to see whether Diana was still at it, with her new boy - but only walked steadily onwards, searching for a glimpse of Florence's jacket or glittering hair, or Cyril's sash.

At last I left the thickest crowd behind, and found myself in the western half of the park, near the boating-lake. Here, heedless of the speeches and the debates that were taking place within the tents and around the stalls, boys and girls sat in boats, or swam, shrieking and splashing and larking about. Here, too, there were a number of benches; and on one of them -1 almost cried out to see it! - sat Florence, with Cyril a little way before her, dipping his hands and the frill of his skirt into the water of the lake. I stood for a moment to get my breath back, to pull off my hat and wipe at my damp brow and temples; then I walked slowly over.

Cyril saw me first, and waved and shouted. At his cry Florence looked up and met my gaze, and gave a gulp. She had taken the daisy from her lapel, and was turning it between her fingers. I sat beside her, and placed my arm along the back of the bench so that my hand just brushed her shoulder. 'I thought,' I said breathlessly, 'that I had lost you She gazed at Cyril. 'I watched you talking with Kitty.' 'Yes.'

'You said - you said she would never come back.' She looked desperately sad.

'I'm sorry, Flo. I'm so sorry! I know it ain't fair, that she did, and Lilian will never . . .'

She turned her head. 'She really came to - ask you back to her?'