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this so lightly. He took the cup, and sat on the bed watching the screen, where the sports man was now introducing highlights of last night’s athletics meeting from Oslo.
    â€˜Boy!’ said Michael appreciatively, stirring his tea. ‘That was a great run!’
    He took a great gulp of the tea, then hurriedly put the cup down, turned to look at Caroline, and then choked.
    Caroline had not taken up her tea, but sat there looking at the graceless youth. Round her lips there played a smile of triumphal revenge—a smile that the camera whirring away in the secrecy of the study cupboard perfectly caught for Ben, and for the criminal court that tried them, ironically, together.

WHAT’S IN A NAME?
    â€˜J eremy Fortescue?’ Janice’s mother had said in a voice shrill with horror. ‘You most certainly are not engaged to Jeremy Fortescue! The man’s a fornicator, a child-molester and a drunkard!’
    â€˜Not that Jeremy Fortescue,’ said Janice.
    It certainly was not. The well-known Jeremy Fortescue had become a British and international film star in the late ’sixties—an exciting image to suit the dangerous tastes of the time: square of shoulder, shirt open to the navel, a mocking smile on his lips that seemed both to invite women and to despise them for their inevitable fall. Byron’s was the name most often invoked to describe both his persona and his private life which, as chronicled in the tabloids, suggested ruthlessness combined with an insatiable appetite for outré experience.
    Janice’s Jeremy Fortescue, the little-known one, was something in insurance and not anything very interesting in insurance at that. He was, on the other hand, a pudgy but likeable young man, and Janice’s mother was soon quite happy about the engagement, though Janice’s Jeremy always believed that she looked at him hard whenever he took a second drink, and imagined the other vices following in the train of drunkenness.
    Even after five or six years of marriage Janice found that she had nothing much to complain of in the drink, fornication or child-molesting lines: the odd fumble at the office party, a possible dirty weekend away that she would like to be more sure about before she brought it up during a disagreement—these were very mild bumps on the highway of a marriage. Really they were very happy. Children could wait until they were both more settled. Because Janicehad a job with a local doctor, was active in the Conservative Association, and a keen tennis player. Added to which she was, as she put it, ‘very much involved in things’.
    Janice’s mother had all her life been a great letter-writer, and the trait had descended to Janice. These were letters to council offices, firms, official bodies, national politicians: letters of complaint, protest, warning and admonishment. They were public-spirited letters, concerned letters. The tone of Janice’s was more reasonable than her mother’s: you could do an awful lot, she always said, if you kept the correspondence pleasant. She was not a busybody; she merely thought that people should do their job, and provide the services that they promised.
    She found something out quite early in her career of public usefulness: she got much better results if she signed those letters Mrs Jeremy Fortescue. Mere Janice Fortescue would be treated politely enough by the bodies to which she had complained, but Mrs Jeremy Fortescue got results. Heaven knows what the feminist movement would say, she often said with a wry smile; but if it got street-lamps fixed, or proper policing in dangerous areas, well, wasn’t it worth it? Janice loved to be able to point to results.
    She also, as it happened, liked to get good service. And, after all, there was nothing wrong in using that form in personal matters as well, was there? When all was said and done, it was her name—that usage was perfectly all right, and had been very