And men adored Lydia. From a baby she had cooed and giggled and squealed with delight much more when in her father’s arms than when in her mother’s. When she was five, her father bought her a beautiful rocking horse that she treasured and she was always on its red plastic saddle rocking away. At six she had always been eager to play postman’s knock, so that she could kiss the boys. At ten, she had set her sights on teenage boys, but they had tended to ignore her. Her age and her size were not in her favour, even though, so young, she did have golden curly hair and a dimple in her cheek. At fifteen – she had looked nearer twenty – she had caught the eye of a boy of fourteen called Cedric, a podgy, lonely, awkward lad who had minimal knowledge of algebra, knew nothing of the wives of Henry VIII and thought that Pythagoras’s theorem had something to do with a hippopotamus. Cedric made up for his ignorance of academic subjects by his experience and knowledge of more worldly and mature subjects.
