Poppies and cornflowers, whispering grass, herbs… Agnes cupped her chin in her hands and, voluptuous and life-enhancing, the sun warmed her. The canvas outside the window was a dialogue between man and nature. A clever con trick, for what was artificial had become natural. A master craftsman – no, an artist – had created such a wild and joyous sight. Andrew was the artist.

He came into sight round the corner of the house and, leaning out of the window, Agnes called to him and told him so.

16

Friday.

Kitty waited in her cottage until, one by one, the lights flooded through the rooms at Cliff House and slipped through the warm, late evening to join Julian. Her feet hurried along the cliff path, still treacherous from the spring rains, and the sea roared below. In her haste, she hesitated and stumbled as if the path were virgin territory instead of a route as familiar as the lines on her face.

He was already in bed, surrounded by papers, a sign that the week had been a bad one. ‘Darling, is everything all right?’ She cast her cashmere cardigan on to a chair and bent over to kiss him.

He looked up from his laptop. ‘Hallo, Kitty. Nice to see you.’

‘Bad week? The market seems quite buoyant. FTSE up at the close and the shares are holding.’

The corners of his mouth tightened: the bear-market expression. ‘There are the glitches I mentioned. Actually, Kitty, a bit more than glitches. Quite serious, but I think, I hope, I can sort them out.’

She was conscious of a little glow of triumph that she had netted his response and sat down on the bed. ‘Tell me.’ On money, their talks were usually good, the exchanges easy and productive.

‘I think we have over-extended ourselves on the projects in the north and I can’t quite see how to limit the damage.’ He leaned back on the pillows and smiled at her with sufficient steel to inform her that he was angry with himself. ‘My mistake, Kitty. I was over-ambitious and bullied the others into agreeing. Classic stuff.’

Kitty turned over in her mind what she knew of Portcullis. ‘Can’t you transfer the profit centre? Or carry it over to the next year?’ She ran a mental check through the summer schedule. ‘Some serious entertaining of the big shareholders?’

He considered. ‘No, I don’t think so, but I’ll look into it.’ He leaned over and kissed her lips. ‘Keep thinking, please.’

She picked up the file nearest to her and opened it. Her glow of triumph vanished. It was a copy of Jack Dun’s letters. Inside was a sheet of Portcullis headed paper scrawled over in Julian’s handwriting. ‘Agents given a poem to help them memorize their wireless codes. Each radio operator’s touch – the radio fingerprint – on the keys was unique and easily identifiable. The listeners at the home station were taught to watch out for the characteristic touch. Like handwriting?’

‘What’s this?’ she asked.

‘Some research I’ve been doing.’

‘You mean, Angela has been running round.’ She tapped the paper with a leaden finger. ‘For… Agnes Campion?’ Kitty closed the file and held it tightly against her knees.

‘Yes. But the funny thing is I’ve got quite interested in the subject. Radio codes, living undercover, all that sort of thing.’ Julian snapped his laptop shut and shuffled his papers into order.

‘I bet.’ She hated herself for sounding bitter but she could not help it. ‘Glamorous documentary-maker. Etc., etc. You might even get a credit if you’re clever.’

She had spoilt things.

‘For God’s sake, Kitty.’ Julian swung his legs out of the bed and made for the door.

She clasped the file so tight that her knuckles went white. ‘Julian, is this woman going to be one of those… She is already – sometimes-we-go-our-own-way?’

He turned to face her. ‘Yes.’

Kitty bent her head so the pain on her face could be private, known only to her. ‘I thought so.’

She heard him go downstairs and into the kitchen. Kitty opened the file again and riffled through it, desperate for clues. She stopped at a letter dated 15 July 1943. ‘You have been gone over a year and I confess that I am growing frightened. When you left, I was half mad with craving the physicalness of you. I bit on nothing and swallowed draughts of burning jealousy. I dreamed incessantly of your softness and silkiness…’ Kitty’s stomach lurched. That was what it would be like if Julian left her. She leafed further through the file. The letter of November 1943. ‘You have done a terrible thing, Mary. You have taught me how to hate wastefully…’

Kitty shut the file as Julian reappeared with a couple of glasses and a bottle of wine. He stood for a moment in the doorway. ‘I’m sorry, Kitty.’

She sprang up, divested him of the wine and the glasses, pulled him awkwardly into her arms and ran her hand over his face. ‘This is my radio imprint on you,’ she whispered, pressing her fingers into his temples. ‘No one else has this touch, have they?’ Her hands slid down his body and came to rest. ‘Have they?’

‘Oh, Kitty.’

‘It’s fine. Let’s go to bed,’ she said softly.

Saturday.

As usual, Julian was up early for a pre-breakfast walk, leaving Kitty in bed. She stretched luxuriously, sated and at peace. Perhaps they should get a dog. Then they could walk it together and it would keep her company during the week. Julian planned to sail, as he did at every available moment during the season. Kitty hated sailing but perhaps in future she should make an effort to go with him. Make that a statement of commitment.

Yesterday she had purchased the crushed raspberry linen suit that she had had her eye on for some time, and Julian had paid for it. They often exchanged presents – a feature of their arrangement. But as soon as she had carried the monogrammed carrier-bag into the cottage, Kitty had lost interest in it. She had chucked it on to the kitchen table where it remained. Theo had thrown her a knowing look. ‘Retail therapy, Kits?’

Kitty closed her eyes. Am I unhappy because I am powerless?

But that was not true. She had the power to ask for expensive clothes from her lover. She had her own money and managed it. She had a certain routine and a relationship – of sorts. Looks excepted, from unpromising material she had made something of her life. It was not to everyone’s taste but she had chosen it, worked for it (my God, she had worked for it) and it kept her in the manner she wished. But she had not expected the goalposts to shift quite so radically at this stage. When she had been young, she kept her emotions in a pretty little box into which she looked from time to time but which she kept securely locked. Now that she was older, she had become a neglectful concierge: she had dropped the box and spilled its contents for all to see.

She turned her head to check the time and encountered the wretched letters file on the bedside table where she had placed it the previous night.

Oh, Kitty, Kitty. By now she knew enough to understand that the body was not so very important in the long-term and to share it was not so very significant either. But she did not know enough not to let it hurt her.

Kitty embarked on her increasingly lengthy morning routine. Cleanse, tone, nourish. A little massage on the neck. Cold water splashed on the eyes. She sighed. Years of this ritual lay ahead. Years of fighting, dodging, manoeuvring around age, of outwitting its incursion into her body, and of never giving up. Years and years – and the result would be defeat.

What did it add up to?

She looked up from the basin to the image in the mirror. Mouth slightly agape, hair lank in the steam, skin shinily nourished. A fish out of water? Automatically, she adjusted her expression into an acceptable one, reached for the towel and patted until the shine was dulled. Then she massaged cream into the base of her neck, where it was beginning to fold and thicken. A fragrant, feminine, highly constructed, accommodating Kitty took shape in the mirror.

That was better. The wild, panicking figure had been smoothed out of sight, and she recognized herself again.

Downstairs, she made breakfast and carried it into the conservatory. Later, she would make a picnic and wait on the shore for Julian to return from his sail. They would eat it tucked under the fossil cliff: good friends and companions with the memory of the fervent, burning, slow-motion sensation-seeking and -giving of the night still fresh.

After dinner, Kitty came into the study where Julian was wrestling with the Portcullis problems and shut the door.

He looked up. ‘When you look all pink, soft and gold like that,’ he said, ‘it usually means business. The Kitty paradox.’

‘It does.’ In a waft of scent, she trod across the carpet towards him in her high heels and stood over him. He put down his pen but did not meet her eye. He’s thinking I look older than last week, she thought, in sudden fear, and twisted the ruby and diamond ring he had given her round and round the finger on her right hand. He’s comparing me. ‘I know we’ve discussed this only quite recently but I want to talk about it again. I want to thrash it out.’ In the silence that fell, she felt a prickle run over her flesh. ‘Julian, please, I have some rights in this too. After all this time, I am entitled to make my demands.’

He pushed back his chair and got to his feet and she hoped, desperately, that it was to touch her. But he moved towards the window. ‘Do we need to go into this again, Kitty?’

‘I’ve had enough of being unsecured. I want an anchor. I can’t explain it very well. Oh… I don’t know. I would like to be invited to the social events in the area without being labelled the scarlet woman.’

He seemed genuinely taken aback. ‘What on earth -’