If my brother hadn’t had his public life, he would now be in pieces, thought Marianne. What but his parliamentary obligations had helped him put himself back together, and that wasn’t just due to his being the man he was. It was the difference between a mother and a father. Lyn’s impetus was solely her son’s need.

But unless he was out of London, a day never passed without Arnold’s dropping in to see Matthew. They were playing a hand of gin rummy together when Marianne left that evening, and Arnold had accepted Pete’s invitation to stay for dinner, evidently no longer scared of catching Aids from the crockery and cutlery, and that was something!

Marianne negotiated a bend in the road and instructed herself to stop being unkind to her brother. People couldn’t help being how they were. And Arnold, like Lyn, had to be putting up a brave front, silently screaming with pain behind the smiling facade, watching Matthew slip away and powerless to halt the slide.

One day there might be a cure for the deadly disease, but it would come too late for Matthew. This bleak, English summer, if summer it could be called, matched Marianne’s feelings as she slowed her car in yet another deluge of rain, in the traffic jam on Hampstead High Street.

She had lost count of time since the night she learned that her nephew was doomed, and Simon’s proprietary words, even though lightly spoken, had rung that warning bell in her mind. It hadn’t stopped their affair from blossoming, though, for such in the full sense of the word it now was.

And my life the more complicated because of it, she thought. There are now three compartments instead of two. Work, family, and Simon.

Compartments? Well, I’m certainly keeping Simon in one. Trying to avoid his meeting even Laura. Perhaps because he’s something I’ve never had: a haven I can escape to, she let herself accept while garaging the car.

She had put the kettle on to boil and was in her bedroom changing into a comfortable housecoat when the doorbell rang.

That couldn’t be Simon; he was in New York. And A.P. had a key.

‘Martin! What a lovely surprise.’

‘You might not think so when you hear what I’ve come to tell you.’

More trouble. Marianne watched him hang up his raincoat. ‘I know you only live round the corner, but in weather like this I would’ve expected you to drive here—’

‘I felt like a walk and the hell with getting wet. A.P. isn’t here, is he?’

‘He doesn’t drop in as often as he used to.’

‘Well, he’s reached the age of discretion, if only in some respects. That has to account for it.’

‘And what is that supposed to mean?’