They both started, surprised, when the study door burst open. Clarissa entered theatrically, opening her arms towards them. ‘Darlings!’ she said.

Both men stood. Charlie felt a pop of excitement, deep inside. She hadn’t changed since New York. Even the hairstyle was the same, bubbled out and frothing to her shoulders, accenting the length and narrowness of her face. He’d forgotten the eyes and their startling blueness and the way she accented that, too, limiting the make-up just to the palest lip colouring. She looked stunning.

‘Charlie!’

Self-consciously, Charlie took her hands and kissed her lightly on the cheek.

‘It’s so good to see you!’ she said.

‘And you.’

‘It’s been ages!’

She still talked in italics. ‘Yes,’ he said.

The butler appeared at the door and Willoughby said to his wife. ‘Do you want to change?’

‘No.’ She didn’t even look at him. To Charlie she said, ‘You’ve got fat.’

‘The good life,’ he said.

‘What have you been doing with yourself?’

‘This and that.’ Charlie retreated behind the familiar cliche. The social difficulty, the impossibility of any normal, inconsequential conversation about the past week or the past month was what got to Edith first, before the fear. Despite an education which had ended in Switzerland and the time she’d worked before their marriage as Sir Archibald’s secretary, which Charlie would have expected to widen her attitudes, Edith had remained the suburban woman. She liked dinner parties with neighbours and holiday photographs and gossip about children, even though they didn’t have any themselves. ‘ We’re dead, Charlie; we might as well go to Russia or the bloody moon. We haven’t got a life any more.’

‘I’m working,’ announced Clarissa proudly, offering her arm for him to go with her into the dining room.

‘So Rupert said.’

She seemed to remember her husband. ‘There was a committee meeting tonight and I’ve agreed to give a charity supper here.’