Margaret: Of course not. Most people like talking about themselves.
Gwen: Why didn’t you marry?
Margaret (painfully): We meant to get married ... when we could afford children. And then I ended it.
Frankie: You?
Gwen: How?
Margaret: At least it was my fault. My man was away; and a boy fell in love with me; it was in the middle of the war when it seemed it would go on for ever. We met at a friend’s house; he was in khaki; at a house party. And then he came to have tea with me at my flat.
Gwen: Were you in love with him?
Margaret: I couldn’t have married him. But he was very strong, and good-looking ... and going back to the front. They knew what they were going back to, and they laughed. He was the first man younger than I was who told me that he loved me; and on his last night in England, as if he was my child, I wanted to give him everything he asked for. And he asked for me and—I was glad.
Gwen: I’m glad you were. Did he stop at your flat?
Margaret: We went to an hotel. We had dinner in the West End. Across the little table—with a shaded light on it—I kept catching him looking at me.... One evening when nothing mattered but our happiness. Then he went back to France, and I went home and told my man—and my life smashed.