Rat Trap

Sheila, a promising novelist, is engaged to Keld, an aspiring playwright. Sheila's flatmate, Olive, warns Sheila that when two talented egotists marry there is likely to be trouble, and that Sheila may end up subordinating herself to Keld, which would be a tragedy as, in Olive's view, Sheila is far the better writer. Sheila nonetheless marries Keld, and Olive's warning is proved correct: the couple are "like two rats in a trap, fighting, fighting, fighting". Sheila persists in trying to keep the relationship working, but her own writing has come to a halt. She discovers that Keld is having an affair with a pushy young actress, Ruby, and tells him she is leaving him. With her faithful housekeeper, Burrage, Sheila moves to a cottage in Cornwall. Keld comes to see her and she tells him that although she no longer loves him she is prepared to come back to him because she is pregnant and feels "so alone and so dreadfully frightened".