***

When Lili returned from Scotland she came round, bringing a box of biscuits with a picture of white heather on it.

‘We’re going to go and see Cynthia and Derek and the little ones,’ she said. ‘We’re going to go and check on their frocks, and look in their mouths, and count their teeth.’

I found that the name ‘Derek’ had the same effect on me as many much worse words—words not to be spoken in family houses. It seemed to me that Derek should have been thrown into outer darkness and the signs of his exit papered over: that he should never have lived at all, and, having done so to do what he did, should be expunged from human memory. I said, ‘I don’t think I’ll be able to look at him.’

‘He’ll just look exactly the same as everyone else,’ said Lili. ‘A bit ugly, like most people.’

‘I don’t see how he can show his face,’ I said.

‘He’s forgotten,’ said Lili. ‘He’s justified his actions to himself. He feels guiltless.’

‘And I don’t see how Monica can bear to look at him.’

‘She’s forgotten,’ said Lili. ‘She’s blocked it from her memory. She pretends it never happened.’

‘And Margaret...’

‘She’s forgotten,’ said Lili. ‘She feels guilty. She’s blocked it from her memory.’

‘I’d like to kill him,’ I said.

‘He’ll be sort of dead already,’ said Lili. ‘People who’ve done bad, bad things start to rot away from inside. I wouldn’t be in his shoes, I must say.’

‘The Bible’s quite comforting,’ I said. ‘…better for him that a millstone should be tied about his neck and he should be cast into the depths of the sea…’

Lili gave a hoot of laughter. ‘At the wedding,’ she said, ‘shall I creep up behind him and whisper those words in his ear?’

‘What about his new children?’ I said. I hadn’t thought of them before.

Lili shrugged and said she didn’t know. ‘There’s nothing you can do,’ she said. ‘If you climbed on the roof and denounced him for a child-molester Margaret wouldn’t admit it and Derek and Monica would deny it with their dying breath. It isn’t respectable, you see.’

‘We should do something,’ I protested.

‘Let Cain pass by,’ said Lili, ‘for he belongs to God. Don’t worry.’

But I did worry: not so much about the new children as about how to prevent this travesty of a wedding. I wondered if I should talk to Lili about it, but the moment didn’t seem right. It would sound too much as though I didn’t want my son to marry flawed goods, and while that was part of it, it certainly wasn’t the whole of it, as I hope I have made clear. Perhaps all motives are always and invariably mixed. I felt increasingly useless. That night I lay awake, for I decided that in all conscience, as a Christian, I must worry about Derek’s new family.