Perhaps now I can bring myself to speak of Lili and why I had hoped never to have to see her again. She must have been in her early twenties when it happened, when Jack was nearly fifty. He was at the height of his flirtatious career and a trial to me. Whenever we were invited out together I would make some excuse and stay at home reading, so that already people found me distant, cold and unfriendly. In a way that has been a blessing. Having established quite early that I was not a gregarious woman I have been largely left alone. I never could abide drunken conviviality, and when my ennui was compounded by the awareness that I had chosen to marry a foolish and insecure man I vowed never more to go out in society. Jack would say—his body freshly bathed and powdered and his face pink from shaving—‘Come on, darling. Come too. You’ll enjoy it. You know you like the so-and-sos.’ And I would say, ‘No, my dear. You go alone. I am determined to finish Swann’s Way by the end of the month.’ The mention of Proust always alarmed him. He would say, ‘Well, if you’re sure...’ and off he would go, tremulous and excited as a child. (He was very like Syl. My poor Syl...)

But I was speaking of Lili: my mind wanders. It must have been a few days after the picnic in the garden. Monica and Derek had just returned from Egypt and Monica was giving a cocktail party as a farewell gesture to Lili and Robert who were about to go back again, and I had pleaded a headache. ‘Too much sun,’ I think I said: I would have an early night and perhaps come round in the morning to help her clear up and also finish the unpacking. I was about to go to bed when the telephone rang. Monica was in a housewifely state because she couldn’t find the crate with the extra glasses. Would I lend her some? She’d send a couple of people round to collect them.

I said she wasn’t to bother. If she sent Derek he would feel obliged to insist that I return with him to the party. It wouldn’t be seemly to borrow my wine glasses and then leave me in peace. It wouldn’t be correct. I said I would put some in a cardboard box and bring them round.

I set off along the path by the golf course, walking very carefully because the glasses were loosely assembled and the bottom of the box was likely to drop open. When I reached the summerhouse I rested the box on the narrow window-ledge in order to readjust my grip. Then, unthinkingly, I looked through the window. My body darkening the window must have given them warning of my presence, for Jack was already staring out at me, his face stiff with dismay, a parody: ‘We are discovered. All is undone...’ Lili didn’t look at me. I think she was too busy smoothing down her dress. I went on to the house, cold with rage. Not because Jack had been unfaithful to me again, but because Lili knew I knew, and would be harbouring feelings that I should find unacceptable: possibly guilt, but I already knew her well enough to doubt that: pity for me—perhaps compunction—since she was not really a heartless girl. I thought she would not be feeling triumphant, for she was too clever to misunderstand my attitude to Jack.