He sat down. The chair, silver-coloured in the shape of half an eggshell, was of a kind which I thought only existed in New Yorker advertisements. George looked comfortable in it; George had twentieth-century anatomy. I was the wrong shape, this was the wrong room, I’d be hurt here . . . I was too tired and I’d had too much to drink. I had only to say something pleasant to George and then go home.

“I’m delighted for your sake,” I said. “It’s miserable to live alone.”

“I lived alone for a long time,” he said. “All my life. Do you know” – he filled up his glass – “when Alice died” – he stopped and looked at me almost with tenderness – “when Alice died, I was glad. It’s better to be lonely by yourself than lonely with some­­one else. If there’d been children it might have been dif­ferent.”

It was eleven o’clock; Susan would have gone to bed by now. I’d undress on the landing then creep in beside her very quietly. But first I’d go into Harry’s room and there leave the roll of colour film he’d asked me for. And then I’d go into Barbara’s room to put in beside her the panda I’d bought from Hamley’s. It wasn’t Susan I was going home to, it was the children. Momentarily, I felt sorry for George.

“Do you ever think of her?” he asked.

“There’d be no sense in it.”

“Have another drink,” he said. His voice was thickening now.

“No thanks, George. I really must be going.”

“I insist. It’s ten years since we had a drink together. More than that. Come on, sup up.”

I handed him my glass. “Not big enough,” he said, and filled up a pony glass.

“Cheers,” he said. “Whatever that means. But do you ever think of her, Joe?”

“Sometimes.”

“You’re stupid. She wouldn’t have been any good for you. She’d have eaten you up alive.”

To my surprise, tears prickled my eyes.

“Let her rest.”

“Maureen says that. She’s been saying that ever since we met. You’re happy now, aren’t you, Joe?”

“As happy as anyone is.” I could say no more than that; be­cause he had been Alice’s husband I couldn’t lie to him. He was well aware of it.

“Not gloriously happy. Just as happy as anyone is. And you have a daughter.”

“And a son.”

“But the son’s his mother’s son.”

“And his grandfather’s.”

“The daughter’s yours. It happens like that sometimes.”

“It may happen to you,” I said. I rose, with some difficulty; my chair, though not quite as twentieth century as George’s, seemed to have forced me into a reclining position.