Sam looked ridiculously complacent and Poppy gasped.

A candle guttered in its confection of ribbon. Cool and collected, Richard nipped the wick between his finger and thumb. ‘Well done, Jilly. Smart work.’

Nathan shot to his feet. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, and left the room.

The napkin bunched on my knee. What would happen to the beautiful, implacable, terrible Alice talking away into her mobile phone?

‘There’s a thing,’ said Ianthe, with a little smile. She caught my eye. Coming and going

Nathan reappeared and sat down quietly in his chair. ‘Sorry,’ he said, avoiding anyone’s eye. For a second or two, movement and sound were suspended around my gaudy table. Then it exploded into life. The words ‘wedding’, ‘baby’, ‘dates’ clicked to and fro across the decorations and the wineglasses glittered as we drank to the future.

We ate, we talked, we planned. We conjured up new illusions to take the place of the old ones, which, I realized with a sense of huge gratitude, would do us very well.

I collared Sam in the kitchen over the coffee tray. ‘What about Alice?’

The wooden look that I had grown to dread snapped back into place. ‘I wanted to talk to you, Mum. She’s taken it badly, and I don’t understand. I thought the whole point was that Alice didn’t want me. So I found Jilly. Now Alice says she’ll marry me, so I had to tell her about the baby’

Having assumed that two and two would add up to four, and Alice would dematerialize like a conscience when its owner receives something they really want, my innocent son was troubled.

‘Oh, Sam…’

Poppy had also collared Jilly. ‘I’ll phone you first thing in the morning.’

‘I might be being sick,’ said Jilly happily, and slipped her arm through Sam’s, ‘but have a go.’

When everyone had gone, I moved through the house, tidying and straightening out the mess. Ianthe was upstairs in bed, and I arranged the remains of the supper on a plate to take to Mr Sears the next morning.

There was a tap on the kitchen door. I opened it. ‘Can I come in? I waited in the car until the coast was clear.’ Nathan was hunched inside his coat and looked exhausted.

‘It’s very late.’

‘I thought you might say that. At least give me five minutes to discuss our son.’

I stood aside and Nathan entered the kitchen with the polite step of a stranger.

He looked round. A couple of rubbish bags were propped against the sink and he picked up one in either hand. ‘Where do these go?’

‘You know’

He hefted them out to the dustbins, came back, shut the door and leant against it. ‘How’s Ianthe?’

I turned away to stack plates in the cupboard. ‘I can’t talk about Ianthe.’

‘I see.’ He digested the implications. ‘I’m sorry I haven’t been any help.’

‘I don’t expect you to be.’

‘Rose, look at me.’ Unwillingly I straightened up and turned round. ‘Could I have a drink? And then I’ll go away.’

‘I’ think the wine’s finished.’

‘There was a bottle of whisky in my study.’

‘I drank that long ago.’

He moved quickly and, before I knew it, I was pinioned against the table. It is so true how smells – in this case, Nathan’s aftershave – trigger memory and stir the senses. His eyes were hot and despairing as he said, ‘Whatever I did, Rosie… Rose, it was not against you.’

‘Nathan, I wish you hadn’t come. It was a happy evening…’ I began to feel dizzy with nerves and fatigue. I pushed him away. ‘This is not the moment. There’s no point either. What’s done is done.’

He sat down with a thump in a chair. ‘I blame myself. I feel angry with myself… for springing everything on the family, for not knowing enough about my children any more…’

I filled the kettle and switched it on. ‘There’s no point in either of us blaming anyone. Don’t you see? We were both at fault. It wasn’t just you. I should have seen that something was wrong and tried to put it right. You shouldn’t have been tempted by Minty but you probably wouldn’t have been if I’d been quicker to understand that you were restless.’ He sighed, a despairing sound.

‘Why don’t we talk about Sam? I’m so pleased for him. Are you? Jilly will suit him, and bring him out of himself

‘I suppose so.’

I reached for the teabags. ‘You don’t sound thrilled.’

‘It came out of the blue.’

‘No one knew. It wasn’t because you were being left out. I certainly didn’t spot what was happening. Detective of the Year.’ I sent him a wintry smile. ‘Not.’ I dunked the teabags in the hot water and watched the stain fan through it. ‘Will you tell Minty about the baby?’

‘Not yet. I haven’t the energy. It’s difficult…’ He looked up. ‘It’s a bit tricky…’

I think he was wanting me to ask questions but I was not going to oblige. The subject was too painful. Whatever he and Minty were planning was for the new Nathan of whom I knew nothing. The bargains and habits of our marriage no longer applied. I placed the tea in front of Nathan who muttered a thank-you and reached for the sugar. His hand was poised with the filled spoon over the cup when, with a sad, unpleasant shock, I realized I did not view him as my husband any more.

In a gesture that sent tea flying over the table, he pushed away the cup. ‘I don’t know why mind and body play such tricks but they do. When I left you, I didn’t want you very much. Now I think about you all the time.’

The tea pooled on the polished walnut. I sat quite still. A pulse beat at the junction of Nathan’s neck and shirt collar, and the feather of grey hair above his ears had grown larger and more noticeable. Only six months ago I would have given a year of life to hear Nathan say that. I would have listened humbly and with immense gratitude. But now the words fell on an inner ear that had been deafened by events. There is only so much discordance to which anyone can listen before the notes become unbearable and they tune out. It is, I suppose, a basic survival technique.

‘Go on,’ he urged, and grabbed my hands. ‘Tell me I’m a fool.’

‘Let go, please. Either we talk about the children or you go, Nathan.’

He released me instantly. ‘Sorry… shaming. Stupid.’ He picked up the cup, set it down. ‘Forget it. I’m not thinking straight.’

‘You almost make me feel sorry for Minty,’ I whispered. I got up to fetch the cloth and wiped up the spilt tea.

Nathan observed the patch on his hand, which was dark red. ‘Things are tricky at work and I can’t talk to Minty. She sees things from a different point of view. I can only say this to you, Rose, but it’s… difficult to be eyed up by younger men who can’t wait to get their hands on your job. They don’t even bother to be civil to your face. God knows what they say behind your back.’

I sat down opposite him. ‘You were just the same – remember?’

‘True. But at least I was polite to Rupert while I waited for him to drop off the perch.’ The familiar strong-man smile flashed briefly. ‘It’s different, as you well know, being at the other end of the process.’

‘Of course. But you have experience, and you’re wily’

‘But it doesn’t make it easier.’ Nathan searched in the cupboard where we kept the drinks and pulled out a half-full bottle of red wine. He reached for a glass. ‘There’s this consultant. First-class degrees from Oxford and business school sticking out of his ears and he’s been released into the organization like a ferret.’

‘Don’t be so jumpy. You’re more than capable of outflanking him.’

‘Do you think so?’ he asked. ‘Really?’

‘Yes.’ It was easy to say.

Nathan stood behind my chair. ‘I wonder…’ His hand briefly stroked my hair and came to rest on my shoulder. ‘I wonder how long it will be before the axe falls.’

This was not the Nathan I knew. I covered his hand with mine. ‘Listen to me. You’re not to give in.’ I removed my hand. ‘What does Minty say?’

‘I don’t know, Rose. I just don’t know.’

My chair scraped along the floor as I stumbled to my feet, ‘Oh, Nathan, after all this, you aren’t happy’

He leant back against the sink and cradled the wineglass. ‘I want to say that I’m out of my place, out of my depth, but I can’t. I can’t order time to reverse. I can’t say that I want some peace and breathing space, when I chose to pursue precisely the opposite. I can’t say to Minty that she shouldn’t have a baby because I should be concentrating on grandchildren. I can’t turn to you, Rose, and ask, “What do I do?” I can’t ask to come back.’

No, it was not possible. Try as I might, I could not slot everything back into place. Leaving a marriage was not as simple as walking out of the door. It destroyed something so deep, so built into the blood and bone: the love that comes after bruising desire has faded, trust, familiarity, the pleasure from commitment, and it could not be rebuilt.

But something might be salvaged… with luck. With generosity and pity too, which both of us must find.

I put my hand over his mouth. ‘Don’t.’ His lips moved under my fingers. ‘Listen to me, Nathan. We’re already getting used to not being with each other. It will become easier. Anyway, we won’t lose each other entirely. How can we?’ I slipped my arms around him and held him, as I might have held Sam. ‘You hurt me so much that I thought I was going to die, but that’s over. I’ve come to see that love flows and adjusts into different shapes at different times. Meeting Hal the other day,’ Nathan squeezed his eyes shut, ‘also made me see that the people who matter never leave you.’ I shook him gently. ‘Nathan, look at me. Open your eyes. You were right in that respect. They are there.’

Nathan whispered, ‘I made the mistake of thinking sex was something it wasn’t.’ He looked up at me, tired and baffled. ‘Or perhaps I’ll never know why I did what I did.’

Perhaps neither of us would ever know. And that was life.