Even me? I wondered doubtfully. Was that why she had been so cruel?

She went on. Her voice was flat; she didn’t seem to be talking to me, Desmond, but to some interviewer who happened to have arrived at the right, exhausted moment. Perhaps she felt like me—simply too tired to move away again, like a coach that has run out of petrol. At least she’d found out that women could louse her up, as much as men.

‘I had my fortieth birthday at Greenham,’ she said, ‘and I made a decision. I’d keep it to myself—I’d keep that one thing separate. It sounds daft, but it gave me some self-respect. Edward knew, but nobody else. So we made a card, to me, and pinned it on the fence, and nobody ever knew. Just the sky. I told myself: I’m not gay, I’m not straight, I’m not defined by other people. I’m just me. Lesley.’ She poured out some more port for herself; she had forgotten about me.

I’d never had time to think about myself like this; I’d been too busy mending the car and trying to please my wife.

‘It was a turning point,’ she said. ‘A fortieth birthday is very important. It gave me the strength to break with her, to break with my old self. I cut myself off from Reading, just like that. I met a woman whose parents were retiring to Portugal and wanted to rent their house, this place, so I came here and started up a whole new life. Celibate.’

I nodded. I was celibate too, now I thought about it. If celibate meant a vast tiredness with the whole business and a disinclination to ever think about it again. I thought of the different routes Lesley and I had taken, these past eleven years, to get here, feeling vaguely mutual, sitting at a table drinking Sainsbury’s Fine Old Ruby Red.

It was all too much of a mystery, I couldn’t fathom it. Just now, I didn’t have the energy. But somewhere en route, along this journey—an even stranger journey than my trip this past week—at some point my son had come into the world, and her daughter, and that was the most mysterious, and yet the most normal, thing of all.

Outside there was a crackle, and a flash of light.

‘They’re starting early,’ she said.

Hilda came into the kitchen. ‘See that?’ she asked.

‘It’s November the Fifth!’ I cried.

‘One Guy Fawkes night,’ said Lesley, ‘Barry went out to buy fireworks. The kids and I waited and waited. We’d got everything set up.’ She lit another cigarette, ‘But he didn’t come back till the next morning.’

Just then, there was a sound in the hall. I froze. Lesley got up and left the room.