“I expect it’s because it’s cheaper than milk,” I said. I half filled the basin with cold water and dipped my head into it. I dipped my head five or six times, making a great noise and sprinkling Barbara as I shook the water from my hair.

She squealed with laughter. “Daddy, you’re not to! Mummy says it’s naughty!”

“We mustn’t do it then, must we? Hand me the towel, pet.”

The towel was clean and dry and warm from the electric towel rail; it was bigger and more expensive than the towel I’d been given in the last hotel I’d stayed in.

I was home, home to the pink tiles, the pink bath and double wash basin, the electrically heated towel rails and the bathroom cabinet crammed with eau-de-Cologne and talcum and bath salts. And that was the only difference between my house and the hotel; the greater comfort, the greater amount of buyable things.

Then I looked at Barbara in her blue pyjamas with the pattern of yellow ducks. I could leave this house but I couldn’t leave her. There was a certain relief in knowing that, there was a cer­tain relief in facing the facts. I couldn’t take Barbara away from her mother, so I had to stay. We would move to a new house, a house with no associations, we could start afresh; but the voice that had whispered those shameless words last night, the body that had lain naked in Mark’s arms, would still belong to the same person.

Once a whore, always a whore; no matter what she’d said last night the itch would come again. She wouldn’t always bother to bolt the bedroom door; lust and foresight don’t go together. And Barbara might not sleep through it next time: I put my hand to my mouth again.

“What are you doing, Daddy?”

I stroked her hair.

“Nothing, darling. Let’s go and have breakfast.”

“Why have you got your trousers and shoes on, Daddy? Where’s your fuzzy dressing-gown?”

“It’s in our room,” I said. “Do I have to get it?”

She stamped. “I don’t like you without your fuzzy dressing-gown,” she said. “I won’t let you be my horse.”

“I don’t care,” I said.

Tears appeared in her eyes. She didn’t weep very often but could always weep at will. It was wrong of me to encourage her in this kind of blackmail; but I’d drawn too heavily on my reserves last night to be able to resist it.

“All right,” I said. “Wait there. And be as quiet as a mouse.”