He sat unsteadily on the edge of her bed and looked at his wife. In his drunken state, he noticed everything about her as if for the first time. Her high breasts and slim waist, the length of her legs, her well-turned ankles. The dark brown hair that tumbled across her shoulders and down her back. And suddenly, all his hatred of her dissolved. He saw her for what she was in other men’s eyes. To any other man, she would be a desirable companion, a good wife. She was pleasing in face and figure, intelligent and well educated. She could talk on almost any subject and could also listen exceptionally well. He could almost pity her for being married to him.

‘It’s about the child, Isabel.’

He watched her smile as she turned to face him.

‘What child? The one you got pregnant? Or the child of the child?’ Her tone was sarcastic and Henry closed his eyes.

‘You’re still intent on bringing it into this house then?’

‘1am.’

He shook his head.

‘What about the talk it’ll cause?’

Isabel laughed now.

‘There’s always talk, Henry. I am seeing my father tomorrow and telling him I’m barren. We both know that’s not true, don’t we? I will tell him that you have a mistress, a respectable widow of the lower middle classes who has found herself in an embarrassing predicament. You wish to take the child and bring it up as your own and I have agreed to it. My father will set the rumour abroad and everyone will think you are a rake who has taken on an illegitimate child because your legal wife can’t produce one. You’ll come out of it as rather a colourful character, a man with many women. I’ll come out of it as the poor barren wife taking another woman’s leavings. So don’t worry about the talk, Henry. It will all be grist to your mill really. Who would ever think that a rake like that really liked little girls?’

Henry sat still under the onslaught of his wife’s tongue, and as they stared at one another felt an urge to confess his feelings to her. To tell her about the demon that drove him to little girls. But even as he thought it, he dismissed it. She wouldn’t understand.

‘What if your father refuses to allow you to take on the child?’

‘Henry, I’m not going to ask his permission, I’m going to tell him. I don’t care what he thinks. All he is to me is a means to an end. I’ll talk him round, don’t worry. Now if you don’t mind, I want to get into bed.’

She was dismissing him and they both knew it.

‘I am the man of this house, madam. It would behove you to remember that.’