“Don’t worry,” I said. I felt slightly embarrassed, but at the same time happy. One day Barbara would be twenty; I’d have a daughter who’d cut short a stay abroad to look after her father. I would have kissed Gerda then if there were any possibility of a kiss not being misunderstood; I compromised by smiling at her and patting her hand, and went upstairs to Susan.

I looked in at Barbara. She was sleeping soundly, her arms round Mr. Mumpsy, the panda I’d bought her in London. She’d kicked her hot water bottle out of bed, as I had guessed she would; she’d only insisted on it because it was in the shape of a pig­let – a blue piglet with a stopper on its head – and the piglet sometimes went on voyages with her. She’d chosen the wall­paper herself – pink galleons sailing on a pale blue sea with dol­phins and sea horses following. She’d wanted ships not fairies or Mickey Mouse or Little Noddy and on the ceiling she’d wanted sky and stars. So the ceiling was dark blue and dotted with silver stars for the galleons to steer by.

She stirred to the edge of the bed and murmured something I couldn’t catch. But whatever it was that was in her mind, it wouldn’t be hatred or fear or unhappiness. She was too full of love, there wasn’t any way in for the darkness. And when she was born, she’d pushed the darkness away; five years ago there’d been a darkness over my marriage, a darkness which at the time I couldn’t explain. But when Barbara was born the mystery was solved. Those fits of weeping, those harridan tempers, those scratching and biting attacks of passion, those long periods of sullen silence – I didn’t need to be a psychiatrist to explain them. And now it was beginning again. The solution was in my hands, if hands weren’t a euphemism.

I knocked at our bedroom door. There was no answer. I knocked again.

“You’ll wake the child,” Susan said. “Come in, for God’s sake.”

“Are you nearly ready, darling?”

I kissed her bare shoulder.

She moved away. “Don’t do that!” she snapped.

“Sorry,” I said. “Your husband humbly apologizes for kissing you.”

She didn’t seem to be listening, “Oh hell,” she said. “I can’t do anything with it.” She flung her hairbrush down. “I’ve a good mind not to go.”

There were dark smudges under her eyes and her hair, generally so glossily black that it was almost midnight blue, looked dull and lifeless. But she would still be the best-looking woman there; her appearance of ill health seemed to me to make her more attractive, to rid her face of its slight plumpness and harden its lines.