We set off again. Antonio’s hands were jammed deep in his coat pockets, his shoulders so square and straight he seemed to be leaning back into the arms of a following wind. My eyes fixed on the glossy black tips of his shoes. Poor Antonio! While I’d been applying waterproof mascara and cream blush, carefully so as to suggest the high color of health, not the tragic masquerade of an ex-lover, he had been polishing his shoes for me.

“You are so quiet,” he said, shooting me a glance. “Is everything okay?”

“Okay as it ever is.”

A violinist wearing fingerless gloves was performing at the end of the bridge. Antonio tossed some coins onto the man’s tartan rug and we descended to the South Bank.

Once Maddy fell ill, I had been treated not only to routine makeovers but to pedicures, exfoliators, mud masks, Dead Sea salt scrubs. I’d gone along with anything she wanted. Why not in all the years before? It had been our game. She badgered me; I laughingly refused. Given long enough, Maddy might have turned out to be an ascetic like me. Or maybe our clash of pleasures had in itself been pleasurable. There was no pleasure in it now. I longed to feel her hands steadying my temples, her earnest patting and tugging ministrations. Why had I not let her fuss over me when she was seven, ten, twelve, when she wanted to help me be a glamorous mother? Instead I tried to teach her that a woman’s worth did not rest in her appearance.

We joined the crowds beside the river. I made Antonio stop to read the paving stones commemorating the Queen’s Jubilee. I took a picture of him looking urbane by a serpent-twined lamppost. He took my arm again, and the place where he touched me felt warm, even through my coat. By sheer effort of will I could open myself up to the here and now. The boats churning past, the toy buses sliding over the toy bridges, the flow of strangers on the pavement who seemed to be generated from a hidden source, some of them no doubt with disasters in their lives worse than mine. By the time we reached the caged birches in front of the Tate, I no longer felt disloyal for taking pleasure in the evening, for walking freely by the Thames with Antonio. I was not turning my back on Maddy. I had her with me.

•  •  •

Gillian and Ian were chatting in a small group. While we waited for them to notice us, I faked interest in the view of the Millennium Bridge that Antonio was admiring, hands behind his back. He had only been here once, years ago. I felt the place belonged to me now.