uncertainty, along with her fear that Tom died a horrible and painful death, will haunt her for the rest of her life. After the War, Claudia and Gordon reunite, but the encounter is more friendly than passionate. Each of them has obviously been changed by the War, but they are both sparse on actual details during their conversations. Gordon marries a girl named Sylvia, whom Claudia finds insipid and boring. Claudia meanwhile met Jasper, a well connected young man with whom she goes on to have an on-and-off, rather stormy relationship, and one that Gordon openly disapproves of. In 1948 Claudia finds herself pregnant again, this time by Jasper, and while she has no intention of marrying him, she decides to have the child, Lisa. While Claudia loves Lisa, she finds she has little patience and time to care for a child, and so Lisa ultimately ends up being raised by her maternal and paternal grandmothers, who share her custody and dictate her upbringing. Not surprisingly, Lisa grows up sullen and indifferent to Claudia, and marries a respectable (boring) man at a young age. After reading an article Claudia has written condemning the Soviet invasion, a Hungarian functionary who becomes implicated in the 1956 Hungarian Revolution contacts Claudia out of the blue. Knowing that he will soon be imprisoned, the functionary decides to ask Claudia to make sure that his son Laszlo, who is in England at art college, does not attempt to return to Hungary. Claudia becomes a sort of surrogate mother to Laszlo, whom she grows to love and admire over the years, recognizing that he is drastically different from anyone else she knows: an open, painfully honest, sensitive, self-destructive artist. Claudia writes several popular history books, earning accolades from the public and occasional scorn from academic historians. She also briefly becomes a consultant for a movie based on her history of the Spanish invasion of Mexico, which leads to a personal scandal when she is in a car accident with the star of the movie, and the press suspects there is more to the relationship than just friendship. The event earns scorn from Jasper, who refuses to see her when she is in the hospital. Gordon, on the other hand, visits her to let her know that she is not alone. Later in life, Claudia decides to travel to Egypt alone but finds it much changed. Yet