She caught my chin in her hand and turned my face towards her, her nails sharp against my jaw. ‘Is that what you want?’ she said, the nick in her forehead deepening.

I reached one hand out and flicked the lamp switch off. Kathryn let go of my chin.

We sat in the darkness. I kept my thumb on the lamp switch. She didn’t move. I didn’t move. Although our thighs were close, they didn’t touch. I thought about touching her in the darkness, but the hand on the light switch felt cold and heavy, and the hand beneath my thigh seemed to have died.

‘Howard.’

‘Yes?’

‘Is that what you really want?’

I flicked the switch on again and looked at my wife. I studied her unblinking brown eyes, thinking that if I could only see deep enough I would know. I would know the strength of her feeling for me, whatever that feeling was.

I pressed the switch again and spoke into the darkness.

‘I want to see you in your underwear.’

Then she went so quiet that for a moment I thought she was holding her breath.

The mattress gave a sudden bounce as she stood up. I heard Kathryn’s feet padding on the carpet and over to her chest of drawers. I could hardly keep track of her shape as she moved, a black ghost in our bedroom.

I thought of all the women’s underwear I’d ever seen. Underwear actually on a woman’s body, with flesh inside it. There was Susan Lively, a girl with long ginger curls at school. She’d done handstands so her skirt fell over her head and all the boys could see her white pants. She’d hold them for quite a while, too. At the back of the playground, by the wall of the orchard. There’d be bruised apples on the ground, holey from the worms, and Susan’s legs flashing up into the air. One sock scrunched down around the top of her ankle strap. I remembered the neat frills around the tops of her legs, the way her thighs spilled out of the elastic, and the way that lovely bone stuck out and then curved into a hollow.

‘Brazen hussy,’ the teacher called her. ‘Susan Lively you are a brazen hussy, get inside now. And you boys should be ashamed of yourselves too.’

And Mum, that time I walked in on her getting dressed in the kitchen. I must have been twelve. On winter days it was so cold in our house that she would go down in the morning and light the gas stove, then leave the oven door open all day. She’d dress down there, on the mat by the sink. I knew she was in there, and that I wasn’t supposed to open the door. She was stooped over, gripping the enamel of the sink with one hand while she adjusted her stocking with the other. White spongy flesh hung between the top of her stocking and the bottom of her bloomers. When she saw me she said nothing, just walked over to the door and closed it. And then when she came out of the kitchen, fully dressed, it was like nothing had happened. She looked at me, sitting on the stairs, hiding my red face in my hands. ‘Aren’t you at school yet?’ she said, with a gentle shove on my shoulder.