At first he took her into his arms because he was sorry for frightening her. They were only reassuring each other, at first; each meant to restore the other’s equanimity. Then their reassuring altered into something else, Alex’s blindsided up against the surprise – which was not a surprise after all, more like something long guessed at, anticipated – of Lydia’s warm nakedness under her unfastened robe, and then her quickened breathing, her eager trembling offer of herself, pressing herself against him, pulling him in deeper, confounding him and swallowing him up. Alex hardly took the trouble to make any bargain with his fate: that whatever was happening might be sealed inside its moment, without consequences. It was as if he wasn’t himself, the bargaining man he knew, but a different man who was capable of this. And afterwards – when they lay still, beached and naked in the chaos of white linen on the bed, the enormity of their act having crashed over them and left behind its significance, like a wave withdrawing – Christine telephoned, and Lydia spoke to her, and it was too late.

Four

GRACE WAS THREE years old when Zachary and Lydia came back from New York to live in London, in the mid-nineties. Of course the two couples had visited each other in the years between, they had holidayed together, Isobel had already found her role as Grace’s protector and interpreter. Grace had been a difficult baby: she cried, she wouldn’t breastfeed, she didn’t sleep, she was a fussy eater. When Isobel stayed in the Manhattan apartment, she and Zachary together had devoted long hours to encouraging the fiercely scowling little girl to walk and talk and be happy. Isobel taught her to fit the pieces of her puzzle into the right holes, the square into the square hole, the triangle into the triangle. — Why couldn’t I have had a sweet one like yours? Lydia complained to Christine. She employed a succession of nannies, none of whom were satisfactory. Privately, self-righteously, Christine disapproved. Surely it was the nannies who made Grace difficult?