I did not know the answer. Each came with a terrible burden of pain or suspicion.

‘Who is she?’

Eventually, Will said, ‘It must have been Liz.’

‘There’s a choice?’

‘She’s a researcher and I said she could crash out here after she’d worked late one night.’

‘Don’t lie.’

He looked away. ‘All right. No lies. No more lies.’

‘When?’

‘You want the details?’

I looked down at the floor which I had swept so blithely that morning. ‘Perhaps not.’

Will put his hand over his eyes. ‘What have I done?’

The sounds in the flat – the muted gurgle of a water pipe, the washing machine – seemed very loud. ‘In our bed?’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘About our bed, or what you did in it?’

Will flinched. ‘I deserve that.’

There was a long, long silence. ‘I had a couple of whiskies,’ he said. ‘I don’t know why. I, of all people… should know.’

There was a click. The boiler switched off and, with it, I felt something die in me… the trust, absolute and unquestioning, I’d had reposed in Will.

I felt so foolish, so naive, so ill-fitting.

‘Will,’ I whispered. ‘Had you grown tired of me? We haven’t been married that long.’

‘It wasn’t like that, Fanny. I can’t explain. I have no excuse but, in a strange way, it was nothing to do with you.’

‘How can we continue after this?’

He dropped his head into his hands. ‘Please don’t say that.’

‘What am I supposed to say? What would you have said if it had been me?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I just know I would have been desperate.’

‘Well?’ I moved in the chair experimentally, because every move I made seemed to hurt. ‘It might have been different if we had been married for a long time.’

‘No, it wouldn’t,’ he muttered.

‘It was all so easy,’ I burst out. ‘I go away with your daughter, and you leap at the opportunity… to enjoy yourself.’

I got up and went into the bedroom and looked down at the freshly made bed. The images it conjured up were too much to bear, so I blundered into the bathroom, sat down on the edge of the bath, and tried to think what I could do. I looked into the mirror at an unfamiliar face.

I returned to Will. He was sitting on the arm of the sofa, still ashen and shaky looking. Our eyes met. I looked away first.

‘I’m leaving,’ I said. ‘I’m going back to the house and Chloë, and I’ll let you know what is happening when I’ve made up my mind.’

I was neither witless, nor an innocent. I knew about sex. I knew that lapses happened and people survived. The world was built on temptation and Liz had been one of them. I pictured her hurrying busily though the corridors of the House. I saw her making telephone calls, working on the facts: smart and organized; the icing on the bun.

Maybe that was the explanation. Proximity – like that peculiar intensity of living cheek-by-jowl with Will in his flat. Those sweet, intoxicating encounters of body against body.

Perhaps that was true of Westminster?

I almost persuaded myself that if I’d worked where Will did, and watched the prowling men, I too might have listened to a serpent and eaten of the fruit.

But it was Will who had not kept faith.

Perhaps, if we had talked, he might have explained that he had been eased aside by the messy, cosy intimacies between baby and mother, and by a new and deadly priority: the need for sleep.

Maybe to give birth is to remind one of death, and the nudge is too sharp and shocking. I could understand that a tender-fleshed apple offers a moment of sweetness and oblivion. Then again, maybe something has to die when something else is born. If so, we should Have shared our fears, for I felt their dark presence too.

12

I woke the next morning in our empty bed at Stanwinton.

What was I going to do?

Take refuge in motherhood. Take refuge in the slap and polish of running a house. That was what I would do. Give Chloë her breakfast. The heating? I’d adjust it. The morning post required sorting. Ordinary life flowed over the rocks and hidden pools and coasted over the dangerous shallows. In danger of drowning, I clung to it.

Somehow, the morning passed. These tasks accomplished, I held Chloë tight and, imagining that we were playing a game, she crowed with delight and looked up at me. Reflected in those huge, innocent eyes I saw a new version of myself: tall and strong, the one on whom she relied.

She bounced up and down and beat at my chest. Then, without warning, she regurgitated her lunch. She cried a little with shock and I took her upstairs and ran a bath.

Now it was the yellow-duck routine, the splashing routine, the song about the deep blue sea and the silly now-you-see-me-now-you-don’t game with the towel.

Perhaps my distress filtered through to her because, after she was dressed, Chloë switched from the happy little madam into a tyrant who demanded extra cuddles. She fussed when I put her into her cot for her afternoon sleep and a thin, fretful wail followed me downstairs.

In the kitchen, I cast round for something to do and my eye lit on a mountain of baby clothes in the ironing pile.

With heat and steam, the iron battered the small garments into submission. If only it was so easy to batter a life into shape. If only I could iron into the white vests and pink tights the bright anticipation of yesterday. If only I could iron away a strange woman’s underwear in my bed.

But I couldn’t.

I heard a key in the front door. ‘Hi.’ Meg appeared in the kitchen. She looked flushed and pretty in a suede jacket and black trousers. ‘Why did you come back last night?’

‘No reason.’

‘Didn’t you trust me?’

I laid the iron in its cradle and switched it off. ‘I want some peace, that’s all.’

‘Fanny! You do have some bite.’ She looked at me sharply and unbuttoned her jacket. ‘We all have our off-days, God knows.’ She draped her jacket on a chair and I wanted to shout: ‘Take it away!’ She pulled out another chair and dropped into it. ‘You can tell me.’

‘Go away, Meg.’ This was the first time I had ever spoken to her in such a manner.

To her credit, she did not take offence. ‘Have you and the darling brother quarrelled? Love’s young dream sullied?’ She propped her elbows on the table and rested her chin on her hands. ‘You have my sympathy. Been there.’ Her eyes followed me as I folded, tidied and stacked objects, anything to keep moving, to keep breathing. ‘It’s not worth it, you know’ She dropped the comment into the silence. ‘Take it from me.’

Her mockery had a bracing effect and I caught the contradiction of love and hate that was Meg. ‘You can’t trust anyone,’ she said. ‘Not even yourself. Especially not yourself.’

Meg was right. There was not much to be said for it, yet pity for oneself opened one to pity for others. Despite my own torment, my heart ached for her as well as for me. I picked up the laundry basket with its burden of clean clothes. ‘I’ll make coffee, and then I want to get on with things.’

Meg cocked her head. ‘Chloë’s crying. I’ll go and change her. See what she wants. By the way, I sorted out the cupboard with her stuff in. I noticed the other day…’

I trembled with sudden fury at her interference. I opened my mouth to say, ‘It’s none of your business’, but exhaustion punched in. ‘Oh, go and get Chloë.’

I had my back to the door when Meg returned. ‘Fanny, I think Chloë’s ill.’ She spoke in a quite different tone. ‘She’s very hot.’

I whirled round and took the stairs two at a time. Chloë was flushed and her cheeks were burning. When I picked her up, she grizzled and ducked her head in an unfamiliar way.

‘I’ll hold her while you drive to the doctor,’ ordered Meg. ‘Now.’

‘I’ll ring Will,’ Meg said.

She and I were standing over the cot in the hospital ward. I was shaking as Chloë lay in the cot, so small and ill.

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ said Meg, more or less calmly, ‘all sorts of dire thoughts, but she’ll be fine. The doctor said they just wanted to keep an eye on her overnight. She’s picked up a chest infection and a stomach bug, that’s all, and they have it under control. All you have to do is take a grip.’

I grabbed Meg’s arm and steadied myself. ‘I can’t.’

‘Yes, you can,’ she said.

The nurses were nice. They showed me where to fetch water and how to sponge Chloë down. They checked her pulse, wrote up their notes, spoke in professional terms. Meg was right, but I sat through the night beside the cot, my eyes fixed on the tiny figure of my daughter, not daring to look away once.

As instructed, every fifteen minutes or so, I dipped a sponge in water and squeezed it out. I lifted first one tiny stem that was Chloë’s arm, bathed and patted it dry, then the other. Then I began on the pink assembly of minute bones that were her feet, then her little legs.

I sat down and, again, took up my vigil.

The nurse, fair hair twisted up into a tight pleat under her cap, checked on Chloë and the chart quivered a little at the end of the cot as she snapped it back into its holder. She sent me a half-smile and I could not be sure whether it was pity or reassurance.

Babies don’t die, do they? I wanted to beg her. Not now, not these days, especially if they’re as round and rosy as Chloë. Yet all through history they have died. The human race was known for it.

She must have sensed my panic. ‘Shall I bring you a cup of tea, Mrs Savage?’

Around midnight, Will arrived. He was unshaven and looked awful. I refused to look at him as I spelled out the details. ‘They say the antibiotics will start working within twenty-four hours.’

He bent over the cot and touched Chloë’s cheek. ‘Little one,’ he said. ‘You’ll be better now’ He straightened up. ‘I’ll stay here with you.’