‘I think a lot of women do that,’ I observed.

‘My aunts had brought it to a fine art,’ said Lili. ‘They were all terribly rich, you know. My family. Any one of them could have had almost anything, but they couldn’t live alone and grow up, so they all lived together and didn’t ask for anything very much except the opportunity to score over each other and get what they wanted by devious means. Sometimes just a certain seat on the terrace in the cool of the evening would be the goal, and they would contrive the most filigree manoeuvres to secure it. And then they would change to quoting-games, and recite bits of Racine and Baudelaire, and the others would pretend either that they knew it or that they found it inferior, and they would quote their own bits.’

‘That is not unusual,’ I said.

‘No, I suppose not,’ said Lili. ‘Monica goes mad if you quote at her.’

We sat in silence again for a while until I repeated, ‘I wonder if Margaret’s anaemic?’ Lili had earlier, in passing, expressed a desire to die. I had not wished to dwell on Lili’s problems because I was preoccupied with Margaret, but now I remembered my manners.

‘Never mind. Never mind Margaret. Tell me why you want to die,’ I asked civilly.

‘I don’t any more. I’ve got over it,’ she said. ‘I just wanted to annoy Robert. He orders me about sometimes when he forgets himself, and I won’t have it. The urge to irritate one’s husband is not sufficient justification either for death or adultery. There has to be some more compelling motive.’

‘How true,’ I said pacifically.

‘I never wanted children,’ said Lili. ‘I never really wanted to get married. I only did it because everybody was doing it. It was most unlike me to want to be one of the herd. Having children makes you inevitably one of the herd. I shan’t have even one.’

‘Does Robert want children?’ I asked.

‘Mmm,’ said Lili. ‘He’s just realized I’m probably too old to have any now and he’s disappointed.’

‘Reproachful?’ I asked.

‘A bit,’ said Lili. ‘It’s terribly boring.’

‘Poor Robert,’ I said ill-advisedly—and falsely, for I felt no real pity for him.

Lili’s discontent turned to rage. ‘Am I a chicken to have eggs?’ she inquired. ‘Am I a cow to calve for my master? Am I a box for him to keep his trinkets in? Eh?’

‘No, of course not,’ I said.

‘I am mine,’ announced Lili passionately, giving herself a glancing blow on the chest.

I laughed.

‘Besides,’ said Lili, ‘having babies is painful.’

‘You’re quite right,’ I said, and Lili said she knew she was.

***

One evening we went to a pub in the town and stayed until it closed. I had thought I would be unbearably tired but I wasn’t. When we got back Syl was angry.

‘Where have you been?’ he asked, as though he was my mother.