“No, no! You’ve meant well, you’ve been so kind. I know how difficult it must have been to say anything at all—such an awkward—a terrible thing to have to say to a-a wife.” Iris kept the sobs under control, just a dab or two at the corners, though what she really wanted was to lock herself in a closet and bawl buckets of humiliation.

“You’re quite in order to throw your drink in my face and call me a bastard.”

“I don’t have any left, and if it had been anyone other than you, Philip, I might have.”

“I shall take that as a very great compliment, my dear. Believe me, if it had been any other woman, I should have kept my mouth shut. But I feel certain that Digby must have many brilliant qualities in order to deserve such a wife, and I wish on nobody the pain of . . . of marital discord.”

“Of course.”

“There. I’ve said my piece. Shall I fetch you another drink?”

Iris rose. “No, thank you. I’m going to find my husband, I think.”

Philip rose and took her hand, and for a moment Iris thought he’d kiss it, like some courtier from a hundred years ago. But he only pressed her fingers between his two palms and said softly, “I think that would be a very good idea.”

She started to pull her hand away and paused. There were still tears in her eyes, and she was afraid to blink in case they might spill out. So she left them there, brimming, because she wanted to make something clear to Philip, though she wasn’t sure why.

“You know, we were very happy once, Sasha and I. In Rome, when we first married, we were very happy.”

“Well, then,” Philip said, with the same sad smile, “maybe you should go back.”

COULD SHE? COULD IRIS and Sasha ever go back to Rome? It wasn’t the first time Iris had thought about this, but she knew the answer was no. The Rome of their early months no longer existed, because the two of them were no longer the Sasha and Iris who’d met and married there. And it had been wartime. The British embassy was closed, the French embassy was closed, same with the Belgians and the Dutch; the Italians and Germans were distracted by war. Only the Swiss remained in any significant numbers, and the Swiss were so busy taking on all the consular duties of the belligerent nations, they held no parties at all. In those early days, nothing stopped Sasha coming straight home as soon as he had finished working for the day, and he usually finished as early as he could.