‘Involving Jane?’

‘It’s complicated.’

‘Turn around and talk to me properly,’ insisted Alice. ‘And hold me. I like it when you hold me.’

He turned back, reaching out for her, and she came easily, comfortably, into his arms. She said: ‘You’re wonderful.’

‘So are you.’

‘You know what I’d like?’

‘What?’

‘To go up to the cabin again soon.’

‘I’ve got the annual conference.’

‘I didn’t mean now. Just soon. It’s been more than two months.’ They’d taken a long time finding the perfect wood-built cabin in the Bearfort Mountains, alongside a small river feeding into one of the West Milford lakes. On the bedroom bureau Alice had a time-release photograph of herself and Carver there – she with her hand in front of her face because she hadn’t been ready when the shutter clicked – and another in the living room. Carver was by himself in that shot, wearing a lumberjack shirt and hiking boots and proudly displaying the fish he’d caught, his first ever, on their initial visit.

‘Let’s get the conference out of the way. One or two other things. We’ll make a long weekend out of it. And you can take the toy.’ One of the rituals involved in the visits to the Catskills was their going in Alice’s carefully preserved Volkswagen, her proudest souvenir of her college days.

‘Thank you. And you can fish again.’

‘I’m sorry that today…’

‘Stop it!’

‘You know what I wish?’

‘I don’t want to go that route, either,’ refused Alice. ‘You can’t, we both know it and I accept it. I’m happy the way things are with us. It’s enough.’ She clamped his leg between both of hers, bringing them tightly together, she slightly on top of him. ‘How was George’s birthday this weekend?’

George W. Northcote was Carver’s father-in-law and founder of the Wall Street accountancy firm that bore his name and represented a forty-year symbol of propriety and rectitude. Carver said: ‘He came over for dinner. Jane gave him some golf clubs which he looked at as if they’d come out of an Egyptian tomb.’