I was sick of Syl. I’d had a sudden nasty feeling that perhaps we were the same sort of people, or, at least, not totally unalike. What a dreadful thought. I had used him. I hated him. The time had come to pull the plug and run. But I had been on top.

***

Next day was bad. Really bad. Monica was wild with Margaret for passing out, Robert was wild with me for not going to dinner with them, I was wild with Robert, and Syl was wild because his honeymoon was cancelled. The charlady was wild too. She was trying to do the cleaning and listen to us talking at the same time. Not as easy as you might think. You can only polish one bit of floor for five minutes or so then you have to move on out of earshot. ‘Oh,’ I had said, being as spiteful as I knew how and speaking as a Masri. ‘You can’t take the little one to Egypt at this time of year if she isn’t well. She’d catch all manner of things’ Why should Syl go to Egypt? Darling Egypt was too good for him. I really hated him today. I kept remembering parts of the night before and going ‘Ouch’ and ‘Oh God’ and closing my eyes and clutching my hair and wishing I’d died. I had to pretend I had a migraine. How could I have…No, never mind. Let’s think about something else.

Margaret said, ‘I hope I didn’t spoil the evening.’

And Robert said. ‘You didn’t spoil the evening.’ He looked at me and then away. What was I supposed to do when my husband painted pictures of his mistress and hung them around for everyone to see? Call them all to come and watch? ‘Now this is Marie Claire. She’s just crawled out of bed and my husband thought that would be a good time to do a nice painting of her.’ How I wanted to kill him. I was very calm and controlled and I said the exhibition had been a conspicuous success and wasn’t that heartening; and I said I’d been tired and come home and gone to bed early, and I looked straight at Robert and dared him to call me a liar and he just yawned.

Monica said they’d been looking for me for hours, and I thought that in a way it was a pity they hadn’t looked in the summerhouse.

‘Sorry,’ I said.

What if they had looked through the window at the moment when...? No, it wasn’t funny. I was going to laugh. I turned it into a hiccup and said, ‘Sorry,’ again. I was sorry. I was sorry I’d degraded my person with Syl, but, yes, in some wicked way it was terribly, terribly funny.

‘I want to talk to you Lili,’ said Robert. Oh God. We were in our bedroom chastely clad in pyjamas and night-gown. He stood at one side of the bed, poised to get in, and I stood at the other waiting for him to do so. I was carefully behaving like a married lady rather than a houri.