‘Or dropouts. No. Clearly behaviourism is not an exact science. And Tilly . . .’ Jomier’s voice tails off.

‘Tilly what?’

‘Well, once she married Max, she did provide them with a stable home.’

‘And I did not?’

Jomier shrugs again. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps if you had stuck with Alfredo or Giles or whoever . . .’ He waves his hand as if the list is too long to be remembered. ‘It must be disturbing for a child not knowing who she is going to find in bed with her mother when she gets up in the morning.’

Judith stands. She goes to the window of her kitchen. ‘I’ve just had bad luck, that’s all.’ Jomier suspects that she is crying.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I’m not saying that you’re to blame, merely that causes have effects.’

‘I’m sure they fucking do,’ says Judith, ‘and no doubt you were the cause of Louisa choosing to live as far from her fucking father as she could.’

‘Quite possibly,’ says Jomier, looking back at the paper.

‘And now she’s dying from mad cow disease from eating all that meat!’

Jomier does not answer.

‘Which she wouldn’t have eaten if she hadn’t gone to live in Argentina, and she wouldn’t have gone to Argentina if she hadn’t had such a cold, calculating, stingy, snobbish, heartless father! Cause: you! Effect: the death of your daughter!’

Jomier puts down the Observer. He can see Judith’s shaking shoulders. He can hear her sobs. Should he cross the room to comfort her? Or should he turn on his heel, leave the house and return to Hammersmith? Turning on his heel and leaving the house is not really an option because he is still wearing pyjamas and a dressing gown. His clothes are upstairs in Judith’s bedroom; his shaving kit and toothbrush are in Judith’s bathroom. If he had dressed before breakfast, he could have written off his pyjamas and shaving kit: with what he would save on the Indians and Viagra, he could buy new silk pyjamas, a gold-plated razor and an ivory-handled pure badger-bristle shaving brush. Jomier thinks these thoughts but he does not act on them. He is not a cold, calculating, stingy, snobbish, heartless brute. Louisa did not go to live in Argentina to get away from her father but because she fell in love with Jimmy. Nor does Louisa have mad cow disease. She is not dying. Jomier is so confident of all this that he is able to stand and cross the kitchen to Judith – embrace her, comfort her, trade apologies, make up.

Chapter 25

Chapter 25