‘Sure. We married and she was born out there. In Warsaw.’

‘How romantic.’

‘It wasn’t as romantic then as it might be now. Believe me.’ I did.

‘What did your parents think about it?’

‘They were glad. They liked Greg.’ She thought for a moment. ‘They split up, you know.’

‘No, I didn’t know. I’m sorry.’

‘It worked out. They’re both fine. Mom got married again.’

‘Give her my love.’ She nodded. ‘What happened to your father? Did he marry?’

She shook her head. ‘Not yet. He’s decided he’s gay. Of course, he could still marry, I guess. These days. But he hasn’t.’

‘Is he happy?’

‘I’m not sure. He hasn’t got anyone… special. But then he hasn’t got my mom yelling at him either.’

We both smiled at our joint recollection of the formidable Verena. But I was struck, for the millionth time, by the personal convolutions required by our new century. Would it have occurred to Jeff Vitkov, nice, boring, old Jeff, the brilliant entrepreneur and family man, to question his sexuality when he had got well into his fifties, in any other period but our own? If he had been born even twenty years earlier, he would just have taken up golf, seen a bit more of the chaps at the club and not given the matter another thought. Would he have been any worse off? I doubt it. Although this is not a topic that supports nostalgia. Even if I am not a fan of change for change’s sake, nor indeed of most change if it comes to that, I am fairly sure that in the end we will all be better off for living in a world where any kind of sexuality is compatible with the twin notions of decency and commitment. But I suppose I just wish the whole subject could drop into the background again where it used to be, and not be compulsorily worn around society’s neck day in, day out.

I didn’t see I could contribute much on the subject of Jeff and his trials, so I just smiled. ‘Anyway, you’re all right. That’s the main thing.’

‘Yeah,’ she also smiled, but hers stopped short of her eyes. ‘Donnie’s OK.’ Donnie was obviously the new husband. I wasn’t sure that ‘OK’ quite sold him with any strength of purpose, but I suppose they’d been together for a few years by then.

‘Does he get on with Susie?’ I was naturally much more interested in getting back to my quarry.

‘Yuh.’ She shrugged. ‘I mean, Susie’s a grown woman now. But yes, they get on, I guess.’

‘I guess’ ranked somewhere alongside ‘OK’ when it came to degrees of ecstatic joy. Try as I might, I couldn’t read this as a household drenched in sunbeams. ‘What does she do?’

‘She’s a producer.’

Of course, in Los Angeles this doesn’t mean much more than ‘she’s a member of the human race.’ Later, after this visit, when Damian’s mission had resulted, perhaps ironically, in my opening up an American career for myself, I would be much more familiar with the ways of the city, but I was an innocent then. ‘How exciting,’ I said. ‘What’s she produced?’ As I have observed, if I had known more I would not have asked this question.

Terry smiled even more brightly. ‘She’s got a lot of very interesting projects. She’s working on something for Warner’s right now.’ She nodded as if this brought the subject to a close, which of course it did.

‘Is she married?’

‘Divorced. And fucked up with it.’ The remark had slipped out, loudly, and now she regretted it. ‘To be honest, we don’t see a lot of each other. You know how it is. She’s busy.’ She shrugged. I can’t imagine that she thought she was concealing her pain, but maybe she did.

‘Of course.’ I know I am sounding increasingly feeble in my report of this interchange, but Terry’s volume was rising and I was becoming uncomfortably aware that the people on both sides of our table were pretending to talk and had in fact tuned into our conversation.

Gary the Wary now returned to our table, bringing huge, Californian, mounded platefuls, draining my appetite away, and Terry ordered another bottle. ‘Do you see anyone now?’ she muttered between sips. ‘Anyone from the old crowd?’ I was not convinced that Terry had ever really been in our old ‘crowd,’ if crowd there had been, but it seemed a good moment to bring up the subject of Damian, so I did. For once, Terry was genuinely interested in what I was saying. ‘How is he?’ I explained and I could see that even her flinty heart had been mildly touched. ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ But then her mind flew away from sticky sentiment and back to its natural climes. ‘He made a lot of money.’

‘He did.’

‘Would you have guessed he would? Then?’

I thought for a moment. ‘I was always pretty sure he was going to do well.’

‘Even though you hated him?’

So she had remembered quite a bit about the old days. ‘I didn’t hate him all the way through. Not at the beginning.’ She acknowledged this. I thought we might as well get on with the matter on hand. ‘You had a thing with him, didn’t you?’

The question made her sit up with an amused snort at its impertinence, although I am not convinced one can be impertinent to someone like Terry. ‘I had a “thing” with a lot of people,’ she said. This was, of course, quite true, unusually true for the era we’d lived through, and came better from her than from me. She accompanied the sentence with a sideways glance, as well she might, since one of those no doubt fortunate people who had enjoyed a ‘thing’ with her was me. It had only been a one-night ‘thing’ but it happened. Sensing my moment of recall, Terry raised her glass in a toast. ‘To good times,’ she said with an unnerving, secret smile making me even more aware of that curious, semi-detached sensation, when you are talking to a person you once slept with, but the incident is so far away from your present life that it feels as if you are discussing completely different people. Still, as I say, it did happen.

I was staying at a house in Shropshire and the couple I had been billeted on were in the middle of a furious, poisonous row when I arrived. I’d been sent there for the ball of that same Minna Bunting with whom I had enjoyed my momentary and entirely virtuous walkout. Our time together was over and, since there was nothing to ‘forget,’ we had remained friends. Strange as it may seem, this was completely possible in those days. In 1968, to introduce someone as a ‘my girlfriend’ did not automatically translate as ‘my mistress’ in the way it does today. Indeed now, if she were not your mistress you would feel you were implying a lie. But not then. Anyway, I had received the usual postcard – ‘We would be so pleased if you would stay with us for Minna’s dance’ – and I found myself parking outside a large, pleasant, stone rectory, which I think I remember was somewhere near Ludlow. The card had told me my hostess was a ‘Mrs Peter Mainwaring’ and she had signed herself ‘Billie,’ so I had all the information I needed as I climbed out of the car. That said, those names that are not generally pronounced as they are written can pose a problem. Would she be posh and call herself ‘Mannering’ or not posh and say it as it was spelled? I decided that, rather as it is better to be overdressed than under, I would go for Mannering. As it transpired I needn’t have worried, since she clearly couldn’t have cared less what I called her. ‘Yes?’ she said, glaring at me, as she wrenched open the door. Her face was red with rage and the veins were standing out on her neck.

‘I think I’m staying with you for the Buntings’ dance,’ I muttered.

For a moment I thought she was going to hit me. ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake!’ she snarled and turned back into the hall. I confess that even now, older and wiser as I hope I am, I always find this kind of situation pretty trying, because one is hamstrung by being a stranger who cannot respond in kind. In those days, young as I was, I found it impossible. I remember wondering whether it would be more polite and, in truth, better all round, just to get straight back into the car and drive to a local hotel and arrive at the dance from there. Or would that make matters even worse? But Mrs Peter Mainwaring, aka Billie, had not finished with me. ‘What are you waiting for? Come in!’