‘It was very silly of you to be made happy by a person like me. You might have known I’d let you down in the end.’
‘You haven’t let me down.’
‘Yes. I’ve made you unhappy.’
It was not much use denying that.
Geraldine seemed to be in the room, watching and listening. Judith felt her head droop as if beneath a tangible weight, and a most dreary sense of impotence fastened upon her. What was the use of talking, when all the time Geraldine, absent and untalked-of, controlled their secret decisions? To ignore her made a mockery of all attempted solutions and consolations, and yet to speak of her seemed impossible.
‘Well, you’ve been unhappy too.’
‘Yes. Oh yes. Oh, Judith! There’s something I must ask you.’
She put her face against Judith’s arm, and the desperate pressure of her eyes, nose, lips upon the bare flesh was strange and breath-taking. Her lips searched blindly over wrist and forearm into the hollow of the elbow where they paused and parted; and Judith felt the faint and thrilling touch of her teeth....
But then Jennifer flung her arm away and said in a dry and careful voice.
‘I wanted to know: did you cry in your room night after night because I—because of the way I was behaving?’