‘Can’t you see,’ I went on, ‘that you’re making my life miserable, spying on me and not trusting me? I don’t want another man. Coping with you is too much already. I can’t stand much more of it, Douglas. I’d almost rather be alone.’

‘Don’t say that.’ He crumpled then, sinking on to the bed, his shoulders shaking. I sat beside him. He put his hands over his face. ‘I can’t help it. All I need is for you to want just me.’

‘I do want you,’ I said. I tried to believe it.

He began to kiss me, laid me back on the bed, his eyes watching my face anxiously as he jerked my clothes off.

‘I do want you,’ I repeated softly.

He came to me then and made love quickly, desperately, in much the way he had always done. I felt nothing except resignation. At the time I was exhausted enough not to mind.

Strangely, the new extremes to which this row had taken us cleared something from the air between us for a time. We had been trying harder with each other since then. I had given in to Douglas and told him I’d give up my job at the end of November. And the house was a symbol of our new carefulness.

It was a three-storey terrace, reaching back from the road with rooms off a corridor from front to back and quite dark inside, but with a strip of garden ending in a row of poplars. The bedrooms let in a little more light than downstairs. I decorated one as a nursery, painting it pale yellow. I hung curtains sprigged with flowers. Douglas wanted a boy. I hoped my child was a girl.

We enjoyed the novelty of the house and discovered new skills in each other. One day I watched Douglas building a small cupboard for the kitchen, impressed with the deftness of his hands.

‘I didn’t know you were good at that sort of thing.’

He looked round, squatting on the floor of the back room, and grinned. ‘My hands have never been the problem.’ His face grew serious. ‘You look lovely – with the baby I mean.’

I smiled, stroking my stomach. My pregnancy was showing by then and I was proud, excited. Except that now, knowing about Olivia’s baby, I could not enjoy these feelings without a sense of ambiguity.

‘You do look different, though.’ Douglas lurched to his feet and came over to me, lifting and stroking my hair which was hanging loose. ‘Your face is – softer somehow. More womanly.’ He took me in his arms. ‘I love you, Kate. Things’ll be better now we’re here, won’t they? New and different.’

I looked over his shoulder across our new room. I thought of Olivia. I could smell the curled wood-shavings on the floor. ‘I hope so.’

I wouldn’t want to deny that there was fault on my side where Douglas was concerned. I was so caught up in my feelings for Olivia, and bringing her to our house seemed the natural, the only thing to do.