Married.

The thought slid through her consciousness but wouldn’t stick. Everything about her felt fluid and dreamy. She felt entirely and utterly married to Aubrey if married meant kept, restricted, owned. She did not feel in the least bit married if married meant respected, adored, loved.

She could not think about the chance of a nineteenth woman, could not imagine it or even fear it. Now was all she had. Now was all that mattered. This instant, not even this afternoon, by which time he might or might not have called to visit her. Not tomorrow, or next week, certainly not next year. Generally people were out of the habit of counting on anything in the future; the war had seen to that. Vivian was relieved to be blind to what might be. Now. Now. It was all that mattered. She glanced back at the house. The cat was sitting in the sunshine on the warm paving stones. She liked the fact that irrespective of everything else that was going on – war, adultery, fornication – the cat simply sat and licked its tail. Self-absorption, a vice made into a comfort, a mainstay.

She started to trace a finger around the sole of Mabel’s foot. ‘Round and round the garden, like a teddy bear, one step,’ she moved her finger to the soft, pudgy flesh behind the baby’s knee, ‘two steps,’ she put her finger on Mabel’s tummy, ‘tickle you under there!’ She joyfully tickled the squirming child. The two of them crawled and cavorted on the grass, no thought to decorum or dignity. Mabel gurgled and laughed, threw her head back and showed her newly cut front teeth and pink gums, her eyes squeezed shut with joy. Vivian repeated the exercise two or three further times. She’d never tire of hearing her child squeal with glee, and especially not today, when everything had to be about love and laughter and life.

She did not hear the gate squeak as he came into the garden, but on the words ‘tickle you under there!’ she felt his fingers under her armpits. She wriggled away, rolling over the grass, eyes wide with surprise, and although his touch was electric and marvellous, she cast him a look that chastised: the maid might return any moment. He didn’t heed her warning glance but continued to tickle her, his fingers roaming across the swell of her breasts, his face bright and smiling, unconcerned with possible discovery.

‘I’ve brought you something!’ He swiftly kissed her warm neck. She moved further away from him but she wasn’t really angry. He was here! He had returned! Her relief was astounding, her delight profound. He was not like the others. She’d thought not, but she’d been wrong before. It was so much more wonderful to be right than ruined. He held out a bunch of white wild flowers, cow’s blossom, yarrow and meadowsweet. The bunch was bound with a purple velvet ribbon that Vivian recognised; it had been tied around the jam jar that Enid kept her paintbrushes in.