This only made me realize how uncharacteristic Ralph’s behaviour had been. Like all keen fishermen, Ralph’s main, if not only, aim in life – not just on the riverbank – was the achievement, and then the extension, of a period of peace and quiet.

None of it made sense. And I didn’t see how anything he could say would ever make it better.

‘I know,’ Ralph said, brokenly. ‘I know. Believe me, I know how bad this looks, my actions must appear utterly indefensible. I will endeavour to explain, and I implore you to listen, if not to forgive.’ He brought two dark, carved chairs and set them on either side of an oak table, where members could sit and watch the dusk gathering over the liquid dark of the Lar, if they ever tired, that is, of admiring the stuffed fish in glass cases with little yellowing notes attesting to the location, weight and author of the catch. Then he went to a cupboard and took out of bottle of whisky and two glasses.

I sat still, too harrowed even to look up, or notice that on Ralph’s chair, a head of the pike was carved in bas-relief in the mahogany back, set against biblical bulrushes. He took my hand and wrapped my fingers around the tumbler. He had never done that before.

‘Whisky,’ he said, unnecessarily. And then he explained.

What he said was that Clare was willing to add a ‘huge supplement’ to the price of the sale of Lonsdale Gardens if he agreed to help her get pregnant, although that offer was never spelt out in forensic detail. ‘The market wasn’t white-hot like it is now,’ he said. ‘I thought the house was so shabby, we wouldn’t get what we wanted for it on the open market, so Clare’s offer… it just seemed like the right thing to do.’ Then he paused. ‘At the time.’

I flinched.

At the time, of course, I was besottedly running after Si Kasparian. I was breaking my marriage vows. I was cuckolding Ralph. Not that Ralph would ever say so. He was too proud and, after all, I may have erred and strayed like a lost sheep but I was, for good or ill, still his wife, as he had so proudly confirmed at the disastrous birthday lunch.

He sort of implied that they had not had sex in the accepted sense, but he had supplied the needful. I wasn’t sure whether to believe him. I couldn’t work out what was more improbable, Ralph having actual intercourse with Clare, or doing the laboratory thing with a receptacle. He said that he had done this on the very strictest of conditions, that Clare had sworn to adhere to: 1. that no one would ever know, and 2. that the child would never know that he was the father, and not Gideon. Ralph paused, as if he had almost squared the circle.

I took a deep breath.