As they were about to leave, Alice and Constance lingered on the doorstep hugging each other, the once prodigal daughter now her mother’s rock.   

“Keep in touch, dear,” said Constance, grabbing Hilary's hand.  “You’re Margaret's daughter.  We don’t forget that.  Pop in when you’re next in Water Langley.”

“I'll see you when you visit Alice in Surrey.”  The flat was in Lorning, Surrey, not London, nowhere near Andy, she was telling herself over and over again.

Alice’s little car trundled through the village, weighed down with Hilary's possessions (all Hilary's possessions): past the church and the school; the village hall and the Langley Angel; past the Parade, Hilary's grandmother’s old wool shop (now an antique shop); past the Recky; past Mrs Dove’s Great Hall; past the turning to Chamberlain Drive, where Hilary used to live.  

“I shall never return to Water Langley!” she thought, as they passed the village sign.  They drove through Langton, past Newton & Ellis’s office in the High Street, now heading towards Chenham and the turning to Frank and Dorrie’s house, on to the Chenham Bypass, the redbrick buildings of the Queens Grammar School.  “I don’t want to see any of this again.  I shall never ever return!”

At last, they were on the A12, amidst the usual heavy Sunday afternoon traffic heavy, heading in the direction of London, like everyone else.  Alice heaved a massive sigh.  “I love my parents very much, but I always feel better for being out of Water Langley.”

Hilary nodded. 

“Out of Water Langley, I can be me,” said Alice.  

Soon, they were driving around the North Circular, lollipop Tube stations signs, streets of drab suburban houses cut through by wide main roads.  Then the streets and houses seemed to thin out and the lollipops made way for long, thin, British Rail station signs, and trees - so many trees, with vigorous, luxuriant broad leaves!  It was spring.  Nature was fresh with clean, energetic hope.  Hilary saw a sign for Kingston-upon-Thames (where Bryony lived with her parents), but they drove on, and, at last, Alice turned off the main road, headed down suburban streets and, at last, drew up in a car park beside a modern block of flats.  “This is it,” Alice said.  She smiled Andy's shy smile.

Picking up a couple of her bags, Hilary followed her round to the front of the building and into the flat.  Hilary's first impression was that it was very modern, uncluttered, bare even, red and purple eastern rugs with tassels on the polished wooden floor; steel-framed chairs and a steel-framed coffee table; plain white walls, a hands-only clock, framed posters in bold colours.  “What do you think?” asked Alice.  “Do you think you’ll be OK?”

“It’s lovely!”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Not very Water Langley.”

“No.  That’s why I like it.”

Alice poured out two glasses of wine from a wine-box in the kitchen and urged Hilary to sit down on the sofa, but then was mortified when Hilary dislodged its tie-and-dye throw tossed over it to reveal plastic upholstery underneath – just like Constance, Hilary thought.  Alice chattered non-stop, so much so that Hilary was relieved when she let her go to her room and unpack, but, in no time at all, however, she was back, knocking on Hilary's door. “Would you like some soup?” 

The soup smelt delicious, creamy, aromatic vegetable soup, garnished with wispy, green parsley and served with crusty wholemeal bread.  “It’s celeriac.  Do you… do you like celeriac?” Alice asked.

Hilary took a couple of spoonfuls.  “Yes, definitely.”

“I love cooking!” They drank the soup in silence, the only sounds their spoons clattering against the bowls. “Hilary, I'd better tell you this, because, now you’re living here, you’ll find out anyway.” Alice drew in a deep breath.  “I'm gay.”

“OK.”  Hilary had never known a gay person before, although, of course, she had read about T-Rex, and Jeremy Thorpe and Norman Scott.  “OK,” she said again, Alice's nervousness making her nervous.

“I can't tell Mum and Dad.  Or Robert and Andy.  Can you imagine Grandad Newton, how he’d be?”  “

Hilary could.  Before he and Granny Newton had moved to Langton, Grandad Newton had occasionally done the Intercessions in church.  “Give wisdom to all in authority, especially Elizabeth, our Queen.  Give wisdom to Mr Heath, our Prime Minister, and get him to knock all those union leaders’ heads together.  Bless James, our parson, John, our bishop, and stiffen the backbone of all church leaders to root out the rot of homosexuality from our society.”

“I don’t think they even suspect, although I haven't had a boyfriend since that prat, Dave, in 1973.  All he wanted was sex and I just couldn't give it to him.  The very idea made me sick.  It was then that I realised I couldn't go on forcing myself to be normal.  Oh, I'd suspected for a while, not that long, though.  I didn’t even know about gays until I was 15.  Nobody has sex in Water Langley.”  She got up from the breakfast bar where they had been sitting.  “I have a girlfriend.  Her name is Sarah.  OK?”

“OK.” Hilary handed up her bowl.  “I won't tell anybody in Water Langley, will I, because I'm never going back?”

“I did tell one person in Water Langley,” said Alice, running water into the sink.  “Last summer, while you were all in Marbella, I talked to Margaret.”

“Mum?”

“I felt as if I would burst.  Margaret was my Godmother and generally the most sensible person in the village.”

“What did Mum say?”

“She said that the most important things were to love the Lord Thy God and to love our neighbours as ourselves. She told me off for not visiting Mum enough, said how Mum really missed me.  I've tried to put that right.”

Next day (Monday), Hilary travelled by train and Tube to Westminster.  She walked through the Sanctuary and the Garden of Remembrance where she and Andy had kissed for the first time, and thoughts of what might have been overwhelmed her.  And she was going to have to walk here every day?  Big Ben chimed nine o'clock and she wasn’t expected at the Library until 9.30.  Tears were welling up in her eyes, but she mustn't cry now.  She really mustn’t cry.  Walking very fast through Westminster Abbey cloisters, the heels of her “work” shoes clacking on the cobbles, she rushed towards a small black embossed wooden door and, to her surprise, found herself inside the Abbey. 

For Hilary, church - any church - was second home.  The Abbey was cool and dark, the muffled cleaners’ voices and their brooms echoing against dark Victorian cloisters, as Margaret's and Constance’s brooms had knocked against the pews in St Catherine's.  Three years ago, she and Andy, having wrenched themselves apart, had attended Eucharist in the Abbey, clutching at each others’ hands.  But, now, back to the present, Hilary didn’t expect much from life now.  She sat in one of the cane chairs, the chair legs grating against the tiles, and watched the cleaners.  “It’s just you and me, God,” she whispered, “just you and me.”  When Big Ben struck again, she got up and went to work.

Two others were starting work at Great Peter Street Library that day, Laura and Jen.  Eating lunch with them in St James’s Park, in the warm spring sunshine, Hilary amazed herself by laughing with them at Monty Python jokes.  Her moods changed, she found.  She was quite shocked at how her moods changed.  Later that afternoon, Hilary issued books to two bishops and a member of the Shadow Cabinet.  “The important thing,” said Marjorie, who had worked at the Library for thirty years, “is not to stare when you serve someone famous.”  Hilary didn’t think she had.

A fortnight later, Caroline returned to London for the summer term at LSE.  “It’s great having you here in London,” she said, meeting Hilary after work and steering her into the nearest pub.  “We’re young.  We’re unattached.  We’re in London.  We’re going to enjoy ourselves!”

Hilary rolled her eyes. 

“Yes, we are!”

Caroline was a social animal and now she led Hilary around with her - pub, meals out, parties.  They went to the cinema, drooled over John Travolta in “Saturday Night Fever”.  They saw “Roxy Music” in concert, and drooled over Bryan Ferry.  On other evenings, Hilary would sit by the river in the Royal Festival Hall café, drinking cappuccino with Laura and Jen, who didn’t like tea.  Most evenings, Hilary would arrive back at the flat in Lorning mid- to-late evening, exhausted, to find Alice and Sarah in the kitchen cooking rich and fattening food, which they would insist Hilary sampled.  Alice didn’t like tea either.  Alice drank black coffee.  At weekends, Hilary took healthy and invigorating walks in the Surrey countryside with Bryony.  She was surviving.  It was hard work, but she was surviving. 

In the summer, Hilary, who had told Caroline she couldn't face the concept of “holiday” after last year, ended up taking two.  In August, Caroline swept her off to the Dordogne again, with Charlotte and other Conservatives, who drank gallons of vin de pays and ate baguettes and camembert, then she spent a languid week chugging along the Grand Union Canal on a narrow boat with Amy and Bryony, watching countryside pass by from the roof of the boat, stopping only to open and close locks with a windlass.  She was surviving.

Returning to London, the library, commuting, and the shortening evenings, Hilary suddenly realised that commuting was boring.  She started buying “The Daily Telegraph”, but broadsheets were too “broad” and awkward to read on the train.  Other commuters read books and, for books, she was in the right place.  She borrowed “Bleak House” from Great Peter Street Library, also “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall”, the two books Margaret had chosen as holiday reading for her only fourteen months ago.  She started “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall” as she took her seat at Waterloo.  For a book written by a “serious” author, it was… well… quite readable, she thought, after a few pages… then they were in Lorning.  Hilary completed “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall” in two days, then started “Bleak House”, feeling compelled even to read at the issues desk between borrowers.  Nobody minded.  In a library, it was more or less expected of you. 

Later that afternoon, Caroline rang to say she had to write an essay and would Hilary be disappointed if they didn’t go to the pub that evening.  So Hilary read “Bleak House” on the train home and, as Alice was away on a flight and she was alone in the flat that evening, she continued to read.  In the middle of the evening, she made a basic salad, and read while she ate it.  Then she wandered from room to room, savouring the space and the silence.  She didn’t have to rush around all the time now.  At last, she could be still.

“What I want,” she declaimed to the empty walls, “is a flat of my own.”