It was an extraordinary thing for Jack to find that he was a useful member of society again. In the afternoons he drank with disreputable Protestants, then crossed town to engage in the Irish language with puritanical nationalists and would-be commercial novelists. Then, arriving home at twelve, he’d find Catherine seated by the window of the house waiting for him, a half-bottle of wine standing on top of the fridge and her scripts spread across the living room floor.

“Will you read out that part for me?” she said over dinner.

“Who am I supposed to be tonight?”

“You’re a woman who agrees to go undercover for the RUC.”

“Oh yeah?” said Jack. “It’s getting that I don’t know who I am any more.”

She had such a generous sense of giving that he felt blessed. In bed he returned to an old habit of his, one she had eased him away from. He started to cry out like a wounded animal as he came. “Sh,” she’d say. But still this fearful sound would issue from him. Such helplessness distressed her. And her mind would leap at the thought that she might lose him. “You’re unique,” she’d say. She held him, saying over and over, “I love you.” And, she saw, he was very generous towards her. He seemed to have forgotten her betrayal of him.

Tentatively, she’d kiss him.

She thought how crazy she would have been had the same thing happened to her.

“I love you,” she said. “Please let’s be happy. I can only think of being happy with you.”

But it was also a dangerous time for Catherine. For though she wanted his forgiveness still, privately, her betrayal of him gave her a great deal of satisfaction. Telling him that night of how she had made love to another man had helped put some erotic distance between herself and Jack. It reminded him that she existed in a world other than the one he knew her in. She could go outside of his perspective. She could command his lust at any hour. But now as they seemed to grow closer, she could find no fantasy to sustain her. Always, to retain her identity in a relationship she kept one part of herself free from her lover. This allowed her the possibility of betraying him. But Jack’s discovery of her had released her from all duplicity. Never before had she been driven to face up to a lover.

She told him this and held him, and yet wondered privately where it would end.