‘Darling, I’m gay. I’ve always been gay. I tried to tell you before…I love you, but I’m gay.’

Fleur stared at him stupidly. ‘But…you married me, we have children.’

He nodded, put his hand over his mouth, which was trembling.

‘But…why?’

He tried to smile. ‘Why am I gay or why did I marry you? I married you because I absolutely adore you. I wanted a wife and children and I thought, I thought wrongly, that I could change, I could deny what I am.’

‘But you can’t?’

‘I’ve tried. My God, Fleur, I’ve tried.’

‘You bastard! What was I, a social experiment? All these years I’ve thought there was something wrong with me.’ She leapt out of bed, pulled a kimono round her and headed for the bathroom. She turned at the door. ‘You utter bastard.’

David got out of bed too. They both heard Ah Heng’s keys in the lock of the back door. She would bring in tea and papaya. The twins would be bounding in at any moment. They stared at each other.

‘Fleur, whatever you, rightly, think of me, I love you. You and the girls are my life. My life,’ he whispered.

‘Where does that leave us?’ Her voice was hard.

‘I don’t know.’ He was wretched. ‘I don’t know, Fleur.’

They heard the sound of small running footsteps and laughter and Fleur turned and went into the bathroom and locked the door and stood leaning against it, eyes closed, her mouth open in shock.

She heard the twins fly into the bedroom. ‘Daddy!’ they yelled. ‘You’re still here!’

‘Hi there, peapods! I’m still here! I’m not flying today. Come on, let’s have brekkie together. Morning, Ah Heng. Missie’s in the shower…How are you today?’

David. The same as ever. Fleur switched on the antique shower and cried silently as the water ran down her face and body. Outside in the garden the kebun began brushing up the dry frangipani petals from the lawn and fingering the small, tight bunches of bananas to see if they were ripe. A dog barked somewhere. Ah Heng shouted to Annie, the wash amah, to collect up the bed sheets. A snake slid down into the dry leaves of the monsoon drain, where Indian women in faded saris would soon come to sweep them out. The phone rang. It would be Lucy to say she would pick Fleur up for yoga.

It was an everyday weekday morning; a morning that should have been much the same as any other. Fleur, turning the shower off, listened to all the sounds that made up the beginning of her days. Dizzy and sick, she reached for a towel and sat on the edge of the bath and shivered.

Was this the end of the life she shared with David?

THIRTY-EIGHT

‘But it wasn’t the end, Mum, was it?’

‘No, it wasn’t the end,’ Fleur said. Naturally she was giving her daughter the edited version. ‘Your father went off to Malaya for a week, to join some paras on a jungle course. I think it was the most miserable week of both our lives. I was operating in a dream, taking you both to the club and the library, meeting friends. I couldn’t eat or sleep. His words kept going around and around my head. I didn’t know what he wanted. I didn’t know what I wanted. I only knew that the thought of life without him terrified me; it would be the loneliest place on earth. It’s a cliché, but he was my best friend too. I’d known him nearly all my adult life. I adored him, Nik. I absolutely adored him.