Will was never at his best with my father. Nor, it must be said, could my father have been less interested in what he considered an inferior occupation. Politics was for boys, business was for adults.

The atmosphere in the anteroom cooled.

‘I’ve come to find Fanny.’ Will abandoned his half-full glass on a nearby table. ‘I thought she’d be anxious about Chloë and we should go home.’

My father put his hands on my shoulders and pushed me decisively towards my husband. ‘Here she is. Come and see me soon.’

I squeezed his hand. ‘Look after yourself, Dad.’

His look was so loving that it almost broke me. I blew him a kiss and he blended into the crowd of chattering men and women who were making their way towards the cloakrooms and their homes.

13

In the car on the way back home, Will asked, ‘Have you been talking to your father about us?’

‘Would it make a difference if I had?’

‘Work it out for yourself.’

I disliked driving in the dark and my hands tensed on the wheel. ‘Actually, I haven’t. We were talking about wine.’

Will was not convinced. ‘You talk to him about most things.’

‘He is my father.’

The road curved to the right and the white line appeared to veer into the verge, as did my thoughts. My hands grew slippery. ‘You talk to Meg all the time,’ I threw at him.

‘Yes, I do,’ he replied. ‘But I never had a father. Nor did she.’

Eventually I turned the car into our lane and drove up between the fields. ‘This evening was a farce,’ I said. ‘One of many.’

‘Possibly,’ Will replied. ‘But at your insistence.’

I parked in the drive, jerked on the brake and switched off the ignition. The interior of the car flipped into darkness.

‘Now what do we do?’ asked Will.

I struggled to control my panic and, with panic, came doubt. ‘What I don’t understand, Will, is that we hadn’t had time to get bored with each other.’ I removed the key from the ignition. ‘Which means something was lacking. If it was, you should have told me.’

This situation was my fault.

As was his habit, Will sat upright in the passenger seat. ‘You mustn’t blame yourself, Fanny…’ Silence. ‘I can’t possibly ask for more than we have and share.’ Another silence. ‘I’m not good at this, Fanny.’ He twisted to look towards the laurel hedge. ‘Nothing was wrong. It was a moment when I was offered temptation, and instead of refusing it I took it. How stupid was that?’

‘That is one way of explaining it, I suppose.’

‘Fanny – ’ he began.

I cut him off. ‘The bed is made up in the spare room.’ I pulled on my shoes, got out of the car and left Will to lock up.

I lay awake, stomach unsettled, eyes wet, in mourning for a marriage as I had envisaged it. I was frightened by the violence of my feelings and by how savagely I had been thrown off course by an event so commonplace, so every¬where, so discussed.

I twisted and turned in the half-occupied bed.

At four o’clock, I got up and slipped into Chloë’s room to check on her. I hovered in the doorway but could not hear anything and, with a shudder of apprehension, put my ear close to her lips and listened for the faint breath of my sleeping, alabaster baby.

On the landing, I paused by the Gothic window. Dark¬ness. Nothing else. During the last few days my waistline had shrunk and I retied my dressing-gown cord so tightly that it bit into my flesh.

The spare-room door was open and I looked in. The night-light in the passage illuminated Will hunched over on his side. He muttered like a puppy, sighed and flung out a hand – just like Chloë. Drawn like a magnet, I tiptoed towards the bed. This side of Will, this sleeping, vulnerable, dreaming side, was private. It belonged to me and I would not share it.

His eyes flicked open. ‘You were watching me.’

‘You betrayed me, Will.’

‘I know. And I betrayed myself, too. Double whammy, Fanny.’

‘I don’t know you one bit,’ I said, and the cold crept into my bare feet.

‘But you’re wrong, you do know me.’ He held out a hand. ‘Come.’

As ever, my body obeyed him, and I slid into the bed, cold beside his slackened warmth. He did not try to touch me, and we lay like the marble effigies of the Earl of Stanwinton and his wife in Stanwinton church.

‘You had a baby,’ he confessed at last. ‘It made a difference.’

‘I did my best,’ I said. ‘I came back as soon as I could.’

‘Yes, but half your mind is elsewhere.’

How could I deny it? The small-print department on motherhood had been careless, too, as to precisely what would happen, which meant that Will no longer took full possession of me – as once he had.

‘I mourn the old you,’ he said, and added miserably, ‘I felt safe when you had only me to think about.’

That was as close as Will had ever come to admitting that his upbringing had laid a finger across his soul.

‘I love Chloë beyond words,’ he said, ‘but it is different.’

I thought of the rooms of the spirit, and of how I had moved from a familiar one into another, as yet strange and unexplored. ‘We change,’ I said, for I was beginning to understand better. ‘We can’t escape it.’

I must have slipped into a doze, for I started when Will asked, ‘Is it the not knowing me or what I did that’s worse?’

‘I think… I think it’s that you didn’t understand what I meant by us. Or, if you did… it didn’t stop you bringing Liz home. Into our home.’

‘I’m sorry, Fanny. Do you believe me? Please… believe me.’

‘Does it matter what I believe?’

‘And I’m sorry, too, for making you cynical. Cynicism’s the politician’s line.’ His hand journeyed over the space between us and came to rest on my thigh. ‘I imagined it would be different but it isn’t, and you get caught up in the Westminster round,’ he said. ‘That’s the trouble, and I know it’s affected me. That’s been a shock, Fanny. Finding out just how deep the cynicism is.’ The hand on my thigh grew heavy. ‘I’ve been wanting to tell you for some time.’

He shifted closer, wooing me with his own disappointments and frailties. I fought the impulse to cling to him and to weep until there were no tears left.

‘I need to know what you’re going to do. I’m not sure I can live with the suspicion that, every time you leave home, you might happen on another woman up in London.’

‘But you won’t have to.’

We must have slept for I awoke, stiff and feeling slightly sick. Chloë was practising her version of the dawn chorus and I stumbled out of bed and pulled on some clothes.

Sleepy and beautifully rosy, she cuddled against me and I carried her downstairs and fed her puréed banana and cereal. Frantic for some resolution, almost mad with exhaustion, I strapped her into the car and drove over to Ember House.

Alfredo swung Chloë up into his arms. ‘Beautiful.’

Chloë nuzzled his cheek. And what’s going on with you?’ he asked, over the small, fair head. ‘Don’t bother to lie. You have circles under your eyes, you’ve lost weight and the atmosphere between you and your husband could be cut with a knife.’

‘Can we go into the garden, Dad? Chloë needs a bit of fresh air.’

We walked at a snail’s pace across the lawn towards Madame Mop, a bad statue of a woman holding what looked like a bucket but my father was fond of her. I narrated the bare facts and set Chloë down to see if she could take a few rudimentary steps.

‘Bastard,’ he said, and that shocked me more than anything, for my father never swore.

Between us we balanced the tottering Chloë, who shrieked with delight at the novelty. ‘You’ll need a strong nerve, Francesca, and cleverness. You’ve been badly hurt and I dislike Will for that. Very much. But you’re not the first… or the last in such a situation.’

I listened to his beloved voice, which had seen me through childhood.

‘At the moment, you imagine it is the only thing. Indeed, it is the only thing you can think about. But it isn’t the only thing. The family matters, Francesca, very much.’ He paused. ‘It is a shock to discover that no one can expect serene and perfect happiness for always.’

‘How can I manage knowing it might happen again?’ I said.

‘It may. Or it may not. We can never know. Part of the risk.’

Chloe’s knees buckled and I bent down to pick her up. She crowed with delight and offered me a small dirty hand.

It was quiet in the garden, damp and cool. English weather. It was possible to think here.

‘By the way,’ he said, ‘I think I should get a replacement for Raoul.’

‘Are you sacking me?’

‘I think I am. It will release you. I think it would be better. In a few years’ time the picture will be different. Depending…’The last was delicately implied. Depending on the marriage, on Will’s career, on… other children.

‘I’m not giving up my work, Dad. I can’t. I don’t wish to.’

‘It’s a pity. But you must be reasonable and kind to yourself. Women are often not good at being kind to themselves. You have a lot to cope with. I’m getting older and I need more and more help, and you are not free to give it.’

That hurt. But my father knew what to say next. ‘Your work is not dead, Francesca,’ he said, ‘only dormant. You can keep your hand in, if you wish, in a minor way. You can keep practising and learning and storing up knowledge. You are lucky.’

‘No,’ I said.

‘Listen to me, Francesca, you have to be clever about life. I wasn’t so clever, and I made mistakes. You have to put something together. I don’t know what it will be, and you need to concentrate your energies on Will.’

‘I’ll think about it,’ I conceded.

Madame Mop had grown a garment of green lichen. I held Chloë up in front of her, and she made tiny mouse-like marks on the grey-green with her fingers. ‘Have you got a handkerchief, Dad?’