Clare’s mind strayed back once again to that weekend in August at Henry’s house. Perhaps nothing would have happened if they hadn’t played croquet on the Saturday afternoon. Fucking croquet. Before she met Henry she’d only come across the games played in Little Women and Heathers. A group of them had once played in a collectively ironic frame of mind, at Henry’s parents’ house as part of a decadent weekend ten years earlier. But in 1996 Clare had also protested against the Newbury bypass; worked nights stretching polyester covers, in several shades of grey, onto car seat headrests; taken ecstasy and stayed up past dawn dancing to techno. It had all been playacting of one kind or another, as she had half realised at the time.