She pulled the child from him and said tartly, ‘Well, at least I can be miserable in comfort, can’t I? Which is infinitely preferable to being miserable as well as cold and hungry. Why must you always put the mockers on everything, Tommy? Why can’t you just once say something I want to hear? These two little boys deserve to be happy and I want to make sure they are. And the kind of happiness I want for them takes a great deal of money.’

Tommy sighed and said in a low voice, ‘Don’t try and make them happy, Briony, let them be happy. I often think you don’t know what real happiness is. All the years I’ve known you I can honestly say, hand on heart, I don’t know of one time when you was ever really happy.’

Briony put the child back in the crib. Facing Tommy, she looked into his eyes. The sight of her long neck and Titian hair enflamed him, she was so beautiful, so alluring. Her eyes were like emeralds glittering in her head. Her mouth was trembling as she said, ‘That, Tommy, is because I have never really been happy. Not since the day I gave up my boy. But now I have a second chance, and Eileen’s boys are that chance. She wanted me to do my best for them, and I swear on her grave that I will do just that. I’ll look out for them, and love them, all the days of my life.’

‘That’s very noble, but what about you, Bri? What about you having happiness? Don’t you want to be happy, inside yourself? Don’t you want to feel the same happiness you’re so determined to give to these two children?’

Briony shook her head in confusion.

‘But don’t you see, Tommy? I will find that happiness now. I’ll find it through them. With them. Because of them. Even today, when I’ve buried my Eileen, I feel a certain happiness, because I have these boys. Can’t you understand that?’

Tommy shook his head.

‘No. Frankly, Briony, I can’t.’

She watched him walk from the room. Then, sighing heavily, she turned back to the boys.

Tommy let himself out of Briony’s house. Getting into his car, he drove away from her. Inside he was in turmoil, because that last conversation had proved, as if he had not already known, that with the advent of those children he had finally lost her for good. She had not had much to give him before. Now she would have even less.