— I was preoccupied, Alex said, — finding all the bits and pieces Lydia asked for. Then there were voices outside and without thinking I was so sure that it was Zachary coming home. Until I remembered that it couldn’t be.

She felt for his hand which lay between them on the sheet, he grasped hers strongly in his hot dry grip. They didn’t often hold hands. Christine wasn’t easily demonstrative; Alex thought that holding hands was for children, not for men touching women. They didn’t often talk, for that matter – not any longer – with this confessional closeness. Christine felt sometimes as though the long years of their familiarity had grown across her throat like a membrane, so that she couldn’t easily speak to him, and kept herself hidden. Now, though, they must be kind to each other at all costs. — You did well driving up to Glasgow to tell Grace, she said. — That was a good thing to do.

— What was Lydia thinking!

She whispered to him to be careful, Lydia might hear them, she was only downstairs. Alex lowered his voice hoarsely. — To imagine giving her daughter the news so casually, on her mobile phone!

— Lydia isn’t thinking straight, of course.

— She’s dangerous when she doesn’t think.

This was another old pattern between them, his criticism of Lydia, Christine’s defence of her friend. Alex had sometimes, in the past, implied that Lydia was too shallow to make Zachary happy as he deserved. — This is a catastrophe for her. It’s our business to take care of her, Christine said.

— I want to take care of her.

— I know, she feels it. She appreciates it.

Alex turned on his side, to face her in the dark; he put his hand on her pyjama top, onto her breast. Christine was shocked by the violence of her reluctance to make love to him. She knew they ought to be opened up to each other: Alex was right, his instincts were always good, more generous than hers. She half longed for the comfort he wanted to give her, and to comfort him. It was the same as when he’d made her listen right through to the end of the music, the day before. In her mind she understood how sex and death were both part of the mystery of entrances and exits, both opening onto this same strange place where they all belonged now, in the sudden shadow of Zachary’s death. But her body contracted against him in spite of her mind, she felt withdrawn inside her flesh, concealed in its sealed chamber, fierce against its violation. She wanted to try to explain to him that she couldn’t bear to be touched, not now, not yet: but she couldn’t, the words seized up in her chest, they wouldn’t come out. She pushed his hand away without a word, turned over with her back to him and pretended to sleep.