Dead Romantic (22 page)

So Madeleine Severn continued her life unchanged. Her virginity, like that of Bernard Hopkins, remained intact to the end of her life.

Paul Grigson moved on. Tony and Sharon Ashton moved on. But Madeleine Severn, who had not really changed since her university days, remained the same. She dressed the same, she listened to the same music, she read the same poetry, she taught the same tutorials based on the same Oxford essays. She told people the same romantic derivation of her surname, about her descent from the Joseph Severn who had accompanied Keats on his last journey to Italy (conveniently forgetting that she had been the first to drop the ‘i' from the family name of Severin).

She continued to patronise her sister, though she did not get the opportunity to do the same to her niece, who moved away from Brighton after the abortion and never contacted her aunt again. Madeleine continued to inspire occasional crushes among her more impressionable students and, when questioned in quiet moments, would admit to the great sadness of her life, her perfect romance with a young man called John Kaczmarek, who unfortunately had died.

As she grew older, Madeleine Severn's mannerisms became eccentricities, but she was unaware of the change. Though she might hear people sniggering, it never occurred to her that she was the object of their amusement. Her sense of well-being, like her virginity, remained intact.

And, when, very occasionally, images of a night spent at Winter Jasmine Cottage, Shorton, near Pulborough, flashed into her mind, she was able swiftly to dispel them. Some things she preferred not to think about.