Their time was limited. She had the sense that he was already thinking about returning home.

‘What about Charlotte?’ she asked tentatively. ‘Who is she?’

He didn’t like talking about his wife. Hilary had taken to observing Charlotte from a distance. If anything, she thought, Charlotte was Helen. Of the two of them, she was the more beautiful. Her figure was statuesque, her bearing elegant. She had classical features, and it was clear she was careful with her appearance as she was always perfectly turned out. Hilary nursed secret feelings of inadequacy over Charlotte. She couldn’t help feeling mousy and small in comparison. But Charlotte had a reputation. She was a flirt who liked a drink. Her beauty turned ugly when she was drunk. And she was a snob. The supercilious manner in which she addressed Hilary lessened any feelings of guilt Hilary might have had about sleeping with the woman’s husband. Besides, she still remembered that first evening – Charlotte and Greg on the sofa, her hand resting on his thigh.

Anton’s face grew serious and thoughtful. After a minute, he said: ‘Clytemnestra.’

‘And who was she?’

‘Agamemnon’s wife.’

While her husband was away at war, he explained, Clytemnestra took another lover. And when Agamemnon returned, she waited until he had sunk into his bath, war-weary, filthy, exhausted, and then she had killed him.

He looked so grave in that moment that Hilary hesitated before teasing him. ‘You’d better be careful so,’ she said, keeping her eyes on his, ‘when you get home. She’ll be waiting for you with her net and harpoon.’

It was a sad smile that he gave her. And then he traced the length of her brow with his index finger, and said: ‘I do love you, you know.’

And she nodded, then turned her face away, so he couldn’t see how much it moved her.

Hilary thinks about it now, all these years later.

What an odd summer it had been, preternatural with the sense of an imminent ending hovering over them all the while. The millennium drawing to a close with all the Doomsday noise it inspired. Y2K was on everyone’s lips, the way Brexit seems to have taken over now. It had made her feel … reckless.

She knows she was wrong about some things. Charlotte, for instance. With hindsight, she can see that Charlotte was deeply unhappy. The snobbery, the drinking, fooling around with other men, it all stemmed from that place of deep unhappiness.

Still. Hilary is not sorry she’s dead.

And one thing she knows she was not wrong about: he did love her. They loved each other deeply. The things they had done just to be together. All they had risked. The secrets they shared. The sacrifices.

No one will ever come between them.

14

Anton

Anton is skimming along the edge of sleep when he feels the touch on his wrist.