This child's a painter,' John said across her, 'but she won't paint.'

'Won't?'

'I can't, just now,' Alice said unhappily.

Sir Ralph put a hand on hers.

'Sort of painter's block?'

'I suppose so-'

'I know!' Elizabeth Pitt said triumphantly, 'Juliet Dunne has a charming one, in her sitting room. Now Juliet,' she said, turning to Sir Ralph, 'has got a brilliant scheme for the hospice garden party-'

Sir Ralph bent towards her. John Murray-French turned away to say to the woman on his far side, 'I gather your trout have got some nasty ailment-'

Alice looked back down the table at Clodagh. She could watch her for a bit now, without distraction. It looked as if she hadn't touched her soup, and she had broken her roll into a hundred pieces and scattered it messily round her place, just like a child. She had very good hands. As far as Alice could see, they were without rings, but her nails were painted scarlet. Her eyes were set slightly on a slant, and even though her hair was light, her brows and lashes were dark. She didn't seem to have on any jewellery except an immense Maltese cross suspended round her neck on a black ribbon, invisible against her black tunic. She was saying something to Martin, looking down, and then she suddenly looked up and caught Alice gazing at her but her expression remained quite unchanged. Alice felt snubbed. She looked towards Sir Ralph and Mrs Pitt, but they were deep in county politics, so she looked instead at all the Unwins on the walls in their gilded plaster frames, regarding the dinner party from beneath their unsuitable, practical twentiethcentury picture lights.

When the salmon came, John Murray-French turned back and told her that his son Alex was married, to a French girl whom he had met in Athens. Alice said she was so glad. They ate their salmon talking companionably and Alice tried to be interested in Alex's new job as an investment analyst and at the same time tried to remember the flavour of Alex's brief, ardent interest in her. During pudding - a chocolate roulade or apricot tart - and cheese - Stilton and Blue Vinney - Sir Ralph devoted himself to Alice. He was very charming. He told her of his childhood at Pitcombe, and how two spinster great-aunts had lived in The Grey House then. He told her how his three children had exactly the same nursery rooms as he and his sister had had, which gave Alice the chance to ask a question to which she perfectly well knew the answer.

'And is Clodagh your youngest?'

He immediately looked fond.

'She is. Twenty-six. Of course, she could have been married a dozen times over, but she has impossibly high standards. She's much the brightest of our three. She worked in publishing in New York. Somebody and Row. I'm afraid I'm putty in her hands.'

Alice rather wanted to say that it looked as if Martin was, too. But instead, she said, 'Perhaps she could get a job in English publishing, now she's back.'

'You must forgive a fond old father, but I rather want her here for a bit. Perhaps you could help me devise a scheme to keep her. I know she'd love to see your paintings.'

'Oh no!' Alice said, genuinely alarmed.

'All you creative people, so modest. Now tell me, when are we going to be allowed to meet your mother-in-law?'

When the cheese had been borne away, Lady Unwin rose and swept the women out of the room before her.

'Strictly twenty minutes,' she said to Sir Ralph, and then to her charges, 'Clodagh thinks we are absolutely barbaric. Don't you, darling? I suppose Americans wouldn't dream of such a thing.'

Clodagh said, The Americans I knew ate in restaurants all the time,' and then she went up to Susie Somerville and said, 'Come on, Sooze. I want a horror story from your latest trip.'

'Braced for it?' Susie Somerville said delightedly, going up the great staircase beside Clodagh. 'Well, you simply won't believe it, but I had an eighty-five-year-old junkie who chose Samarkand as the spot to trip out-'

Margot Unwin took Alice's arm.

'My dear, I do hope they looked after you at your end of the table.'

'Beautifully, thank you-'

'Let's find you a loo, my dear, the geography of this house is a nightmare for strangers.'

They went up the stairs together behind Susie and Clodagh, Margot talking all the time, and across an immense landing peopled with giant Chinese jars to one of several panelled doors. Margot thrust it open with her free hand and pushed Alice into the pink warmth beyond.

'Take your time, my dear.'

Alice was suddenly desperately tired. Shut into this baronial bathroom done up in a style Cecily would describe as Pont Street 1955, she could at last look at her watch. It was only ten past ten. There would have to be half an hour without the men, and then half an hour with them, before she could even begin to signal home to Martin across the room. She looked in the mirror. To herself she looked badly put together and amateurish. Perhaps it was time to cut off her pigtail.

Outside the bathroom, Sarah Alleyne was waiting for her. Sarah was fair and expensive looking, and Juliet Dunne had said that she was brilliant on both horses and skis.

'I wondered,' she said now, languidly, to Alice, 'I wondered if we could talk about sharing a school run. My wretched nanny's pregnant and I'm quite stuck, just for now-'

In the drawing room the ladies were gathered, holding cups of black coffee and feigning indifference to a silver dish of chocolates. Neither Clodagh nor Susie Somerville was there. Lady Unwin sat Alice beside her on a little French sofa, and talked about the village. She went through a kind of vivacious inventory of inhabitants, from old Fred Mott who was nearly a hundred through Miss Pimm and Miss Payne to some old thing called Lettice Deverel who played the harp. After twenty minutes, Alice realized that she had not been asked a single question. After twenty-five minutes, the men came in, and after thirty, Susie and Clodagh returned still absorbed in some conversation. Martin was holding both brandy and a cigar, neither of which he normally touched, and he sat down beside the gaunt Mrs Pitt with every show of enthusiasm. Alice realized, with amazement, that he was really enjoying himself.

She could not drag him away until almost midnight, and only then because other people were beginning to look round for Shadwell and their coats and to say, 'Come on, old thing, eight o'clock church tomorrow, don't forget.' Both Unwins kissed Alice goodnight but Clodagh, talking to the Harleyford man whom Alice wondered if Lady Unwin intended to be the next boyfriend, just waved from across the room and called, 'Look at the beams!' to Martin.

'What did she mean?' Alice said in the car.

'She and her brother carved swear words into the beams in the room above our garage, for a dare, when they were little. She couldn't remember what the words were, though.'

He began to laugh.

'Was she nice?' Alice said.

'Good fun,' he said, still laughing. 'Good fun.'

At home they found James asleep in their bed, clutching Alice's nightie. Gwen said she was sorry about it, but he'd been a proper handful. Martin carried him to his own bed, and then drove Gwen home while Alice sat on the floor of James's room and waited for him to sink down into deep oblivion again. She sat with her arms round her knees and her head bent and thought, without enthusiasm, of the dinner party. When Martin came back, she crept out of James's room and went to their bedroom where Martin was chucking his clothes over the back of a chair.

'Did you enjoy it? Did you like tonight?'

He was down to his socks and boxer shorts. He pulled one sock off and dropped it.

'It was terrific,' he said. He pulled off the other sock. 'Wasn't it?'

She went past him to the cupboard where she kept her clothes.

'I think you did rather better than me at dinner.'

'Oh-ho,' he said sounding pleased. He seldom flirted, but he liked to be flirted with. 'D'you think so?'

'I thought she was jolly rude,' Alice said, from half inside the cupboard.

He began to hum. Clodagh had been far from rude to him.

'Give her time-'

'If I can be bothered-'

'Allie,' he said, suddenly serious, 'we can't fall out with the Unwins.'

'Can't?'

'No. You just can't be bolshy.'

He went off to brush his teeth. When he came back, Alice was in her yellow dressing gown, fiercely brushing her hair. When they were first married, he used to love watching her do it; now he got into bed, hardly looking, and punched the pillows into the shape he liked.

'You looked great tonight,' he said absently.

'I felt a mess-'

'Rubbish.' His voice was thickly sleepy.

She went over to the window and parted the curtains to look out. There was a bright hard white moon, and the shadow of the fence lay in a black grid on the silver grass. I would so like to be free, Alice thought involuntarily. I am so tired of myself and the muddle of everything. I wish ... She stopped.

'Come to bed,' Martin said.

She dropped the curtain and crossed the room to climb in beside him. He turned to roll himself behind her, cupping her breast in his hand. She stiffened, very slightly.

'OK, OK,' he said. He rolled away. 'Night.'

She reached to turn out her bedside lamp. A silver slice fell through a gap in the curtains.

'Martin. Sorry-'

He grunted.

She turned on her side and lay there, staring into the dim room. Outside an owl called, from across the valley, and after a while another owl answered it from the beeches high above the Park. Then, from down the corridor, but coming nearer at every step, came the sound of James, crying.