Later, as the party was coming to an end and people were going home, I saw her in earnest conversation with my father. I couldn’t believe she was telling him what had happened but I thought she looked distressed. In fact I thought they both did. If they were discussing our kiss it seemed to me they were discussing it with unnecessary seriousness.

Once everyone had gone my father went around emptying ash trays and I shared a cigarette with my mother. She had put something glittering in her hair, particles of which had fallen onto her bare shoulders. Light flashed from her eyes also. She looked rather fine and fierce I thought, like one of those avenging Greek mothers. But she was insisting she’d had a good night – or rather, since she did nothing by halves, that she’d had one of the best nights of her life. ‘Everybody said they’d never been to a happier party,’ she told me. She said the same on the day I married Sharon: ‘I haven’t spoken to a single person that’s ever seen a more beautiful ceremony.’

My father joined us for a moment before retiring. ‘Well I’m off,’ he said. ‘Good night, Barney. I’ll see you up there, Rabika,’ he said to my mother.

‘It’s Rachel,’ she reminded him.

‘Yes, well I’ll still see you up there,’ he said. He was short with her. I knew he believed that I was a bad influence on her, that I brought out the pedantic side of her nature.

We sat silent for ten minutes, listening to him pottering about upstairs. Then, when we heard him snoring, she said, ‘I’m concerned about your father.’

I raised an eyebrow.

‘I think there’s something between them,’ she continued.

I didn’t seem to need any prompting. ‘Dad and Mrs Flatman?’

She nodded. A great tragic movement of the head, her eyes full of wild scorn.

But I was sorrier for me than for her. It was just a question of a husband and a best friend for her – a trite tale; whereas for me, if indeed there was something between them, unspeakable conflicts raged, between blood and passion, between pride and shame, between selfishness and duty, pitting loyalty against loyalty, pitting the son against the lover, ploughing up the green fields of my past, ravaging my settled sense of who was who in the drama of my life. And I wasn’t even thinking about Sharon and Fitzpiers sitting up in my bed finishing off what was left of the plum pudding.

‘How long have you suspected this?’ I asked.

She gave me one of her immoderate stares – the kind that usually accompanied the description of some arcane abstruse insult. ‘Twenty-eight years,’ she said.