Susan stared at me, her face twitching, then ran out of the room. I turned back to my plate, but put it aside, half eaten. Sausages and chips and beans were Harry’s favourite meal, but not mine.

I lit a cigarette. This was the way a marriage ended. I had felt no pity looking at Susan’s white, twitching face; I had only wanted, genuinely and soberly, to hit her.

The rain had washed the colour from the sky and the laughing peasants on the wallpaper were dancing at an auto-da-fé not a fiesta, they were laughing at someone writhing in the flames, they were dancing round a blackened figure – its mouth jerked by agony into a grotesquely symmetrical oblong – in the centre of the cobbled market square. And now that I came to look at it, the wallpaper never seemed to show the square in its entirety. The pattern was incomplete; but if I looked at it long enough I should see the missing piece.

“Where’s Mummy gone?” Barbara asked.

“Not far,” I said.

I began to gather up the plates.

“Come and help Daddy. Harry, too.”

“I want my Mummy,” Barbara said.

“She’ll come back soon,” I said. “I’ll read you a story.”

“I don’t want a story.” She started to cry again. “I just want my Mummy.”

Her lower lip was pushed out, her eyes red, the usually pretty face strangely adult, its soft but pure lines lax and monkeyish; for the first time in my life I felt genuinely angry with her, seeing her as Susan’s daughter rather than mine.

“Then want must be your master,” I said. “Shut up or I’ll give you something to cry for.”

The tears stopped. She had never heard that tone in my voice before.

“Darling, you must be told. Daddy loves you, you know that . . .” My voice, to my surprise, was weak and quavering.

“I want my Mummy,” she said.

“I’ll fetch her,” I said.

* * *

Later, after Harry had gone to bed, Susan looked up from her sewing and said quietly: “Joe, we can’t go on like this.”

“It’ll adjust itself,” I said.

“I’m afraid that Barbara has guessed something.”

“Don’t be stupid. She’s only four.”

“She’s not stupid. And you’re making your feelings about Mark and Sybil pretty obvious.”

“Am I?” Again I felt the desire to hit her. “Perhaps it’s not my feelings which upset the child. Perhaps she’s seen something—”

Susan stood up. “You promised,” she said. “You promised. You’re not being fair.”

“All right. I shouldn’t have said it. But tell me what’s on your mind, for Christ’s sake.”

“Joe, you’re full of hate. You can’t hide it, Joe. It’s twisting you, can’t you see it?”

“I’m bitter and twisted, is that it? What the hell else do you expect?”