“That’s not true. You know what I’m talking about, I saw you a second ago. Darling, you’ve been like this ever since Catherine, now please—”

He put his hands on my shoulders, assumed a bewildered yet affectionate expression—slight frown, warm eyes, head on one side. “I haven’t been like anything. I’m always the same. You know me.”

The concern was still flowing, unstinted. I was a skilled assayer by this time: I judged it to be very acceptable, good quality. If you’d never known anything different, you could take it at face value. It made my gorge rise.

“Aren’t you hurt by what I said?” My voice began to shake with misery. “Isn’t it upsetting, at the very least, to be accused of having changed? Changed so much that your wife is begging you to go back to how you were?”

“I’m not upset.”

“You should be!”

“Well, I’m sorry I’m not.” He looked at his watch. “And I must get on.”

—

I slept badly that week. On the Friday night, the night before I was supposed to go back and see Philip, I got out of bed in the small hours and went downstairs and sat in the kitchen. My handbag rested on the countertop. I remembered the angel Philip had drawn. I felt guilty forgetting her. She had been rejected, folded, almost crumpled, in my handbag. I got up and took her out.

There were big creases in the paper but I smoothed them as best I could. The only thing that pleased me was her hair—that, and the way she was suspended in the air. Not flying like a fairy but hanging, beautifully, as if she had achieved her natural level of buoyancy in this thick, almost but not quite aqueous, atmosphere. It was dignified and not at all childlike.

I stroked her face as Philip had stroked me on the paper. The picture where I had the glimmer in my eyes. What had amused me? Oh, yes. Selling a fictitious diamond for a hypothetical bar of Swiss chocolate to take on a completely imaginary walk up a painted hillside. All this playful nonsense swept away by one touch of my face, of his drawing of my face.

I could not feel anything of Catherine beneath my fingers.