'He's got to win,' she said.

I said soothingly 'I don't see why he shouldn't.' She picked up unerringly the undertone I hadn't known would creep into my voice: the scepticism, the easy complacent tendency to discount her urgency as the fantasies of an excitable woman. I heard the nuances myself, and saw them uncomfortably through her eyes.

'My God, I've wasted my time coming here, haven't I?' she said bitterly, standing up. 'You're like all bloody men. You've got menopause on the brain.'

'That's not true. And I said I'd try.'

'Yes.' The word was a sneer. She was stoking up her own anger, indulging an inner need to explode. She practically threw her empty glass at me instead of handing it. I missed catching it, and it fell against the side of the coffee table, and broke.

She looked down at the glittering pieces and stuffed the jagged rage halfway back into its box.

'Sorry,' she said shortly.

'It doesn't matter.'

'Put it down to strain.'

'Yes.'

'I'll have to go and see that film. George will ask…' She slid into her raincoat and moved jerkily towards the door, her whole body still trembling with tension. 'I shouldn't have come here. But I thought…'

'Rosemary,' I said flatly. 'I've said I'll try, and I will.'

'Nobody knows what it's like.'

I followed her into the hall, feeling her jangling desperation almost as if it were making actual disturbances in the air. She picked the black wig off the small table there and put it back on her head, tucking her own brown hair underneath with fierce unfriendly jabs, hating herself, her disguise and me: hating the visit, the lies to George, the seedy furtiveness of her actions. She painted on a fresh layer of the dark lipstick with unnecessary force, as if assaulting herself; tied the knot on the scarf with a savage jerk, and fumbled in her handbag for the tinted glasses.