Antonio kept me in his gaze for a long moment, weighing something. “Do you know how it felt when you told me Maddy was dead?”

We were free to touch each other within certain limits, arm or shoulder, for a second or two. Now I touched his wrist on the tabletop and left my hand there. My fingernails were blank. I had not painted them in months. “How?”

“Like she had been brought to life again, and then killed in front of my eyes.”

I withdrew my hand. Antonio sat back.

“First I had the shock of Maddy writing to me. Then I grew a little bit fond of her. Then she stopped. Okay. She had second thoughts. Or maybe I said something wrong. But I was thinking no matter what, we would meet one day. And there you were”—he gazed around like a sleepwalker at the stainless steel ovens, the waiters striped like cartoon convicts—“in this place, actually, and I thought, Okay, Eve and I will find a way to know each other again. We have Maddy between us. And then—” He sliced the air.

I bent my head. “I’m so sorry, Antonio. Really I am.”

“Did you do it on purpose, Eve?”

“I should have told you before.”

“Yes. You should have.” The way he shifted in his chair felt like a giant shrug, but his voice was soft. “We both have things to be sorry about.”

“I guess that’s one thing that can’t happen to a woman. You can’t have a child out there you know nothing about. Even if you give your baby away, you know you’ve had one.”

He was playing with the bud vase on the table. “I felt guilty about it for years. I used to be a good Catholic boy, you know. When you are raised the way I was raised, it is in your blood.” He paused. “That’s why I was angry with myself. For being stubborn. Driving you to . . . Or thinking I did.”

“Is Erica a good Catholic?” I said, trying out an Alison-like version of myself.

Antonio looked shocked. “Why are you asking that?”

“I want to know about your family.”

He crossed and recrossed his legs. “She is not a Catholic. She is not anything. She puts down Church of England on forms.”

“Why?”

“That’s what they do here.” He continued with reluctance. “She’s a wonderful mother. Like you, I am sure. We’ve been twelve years together.”

“What does she do?”

“Before the boys, she worked for a publisher. She went back for a year after Oscar, but when Daniel was born, it was too much. She was too divided. She wanted to be home with them.”

I turned sideways, resting my elbow on the chair back. “What’s it like, where you live? Stoke Newington, where I’m staying, feels like a village.”

“London’s made out of villages. Blackheath is an old village too.”