He drove through the fitful imperfect darkness of the night streets, furtive with their intermittent traffic, red-eyed with lights; then alongside the shrouded Heath. What had happened? This new reality seemed like a trick of the darkness: momentous but so accidental. He had almost not gone to Garret’s Lane. And he had no idea what came next: much gnashing of teeth and wailing, no doubt. They had broken, he and Lydia, something that had been a monument containing everyone’s sorrow – how could they not be punished? He was in his fifties and for all he knew, the shape of all their lives was shaken loose now; his awareness burned with the hurt he had done to his wife. Yet an intimation surfaced, like a post standing up out of a tide for him to steer by: that he was strong enough for whatever it was, this twist of his fate. He had always known what lay behind this opening, more or less decently closed in his married life so far: the ocean depths of sex. This possibility had existed in him always, he was like his father.

When he’d found a parking space in their street he tried to open the front door to the flat with his key, but Christine had pushed the bolt across. He rang the bell and seemed to sense her listening very close to him, on the other side of the door – he was sure he heard her breathing. He called her name in a low voice but didn’t knock, in case he woke their neighbours downstairs in the divided house – Chris would hate that. From the car he tried phoning but her mobile was turned off; she let the landline ring and didn’t answer it. A light was on in their first-floor sitting room, the blinds were drawn down: he thought he saw her shadow passing behind them and then the light went out, definitive as an eye closing, repudiating sight and being seen. When he drove away he didn’t go back to Garret’s Lane at once but chose a different route through the centre, parked somewhere by the Thames where he wasn’t supposed to, and got out of the car. He stood for twenty minutes watching the broad river slipping past on its own urgent business from bridge to bridge, its brown water oily as mud in the oblique half-light. But he wasn’t imagining throwing himself in. Something cruel and cold had come to the surface in his life, appalling and exhilarating. He could smell the river’s mineral breath, hear a rhythmic slow knocking from one of the static pontoons moored in the current.