‘God you’re disgusting,’ said the hot date. ‘God.’

‘Would you like me to tell you a bedtime story?’ I asked her. ‘All about Elgin and his wife Louise? Oh and about me too?’

‘Darling, go out to the car and telephone for the police will you?’ Elgin opened the door and the hot date scuttled out. Even in my decrepit state I was taken aback. ‘Why does she have to phone from the car, or are you showing off?’

‘My fiancée is telephoning from the car for her own safety.’

‘Not because there’s something you don’t want her to hear?’

Elgin smiled pityingly, he had never been very good at smiling, mostly his mouth just moved around his face. ‘I think it’s time you left.’

I looked down the road to the car. The hot date had the phone in one hand and the instruction manual on her knee.

‘I think we’ve got a few minutes, Elgin. Where’s Louise?’

‘I don’t know and I don’t care.’

‘That’s not what you said at Christmas.’

‘Last year I thought I could make Louise see sense. I was mistaken.’

‘It didn’t have anything to do with the Civil List did it?’

I didn’t expect him to react but his pale cheeks turned clown-red. He pushed me roughly down the steps. ‘That’s enough, get out.’ My mind cleared and for a brief Samson moment my strength returned. I stood below him on the steps, below the water-line of his envy. I remembered the morning when he had challenged us in the kitchen. He had wanted us to be guilty, to creep away, our pleasure ruined by adult propriety. Instead Louise had left him. The ultimate act of selfishness; a woman who puts herself first.

I was colt-mad. Mad with pleasure at Louise’s escape. I thought of her packing her things, closing the door, leaving him for ever. She was free. Is that you flying over the fields with the wind under your wing? Why didn’t I trust you? Am I any better than Elgin? Now you’ve made fools of us both and sprung away. The snare didn’t close on you. It closed on us.

Colt-mad. Break Elgin. This is where my feelings will spill, not over Louise in fountains of thankfulness but here down on him in sulphurous streams.

He started motioning to the hot date, his arms in extravagant semaphore, a silly puppet boy with the keys to a fancy car.

‘Elgin, you’re a doctor, aren’t you? Then you’ll recall that a doctor can guess the size of someone’s heart by the size of their fist. Here’s mine.’

I saw Elgin’s look of complete astonishment as my fists, locked together in unholy prayer, came up in a line of offering under his jaw. Impact. Head snapped back, sick crunch like a meat grinder. Elgin at my feet in foetus position bleeding. He’s making noises like a pig at the trough. He’s not dead. Why not? If it’s so easy for Louise to die why is it so hard for Elgin to do the same?