"Shit," Ferdinand said. "I didn't mean…"

"I should absolutely hope not."

We both remembered, though, the rainy afternoon when Gervase had put the threat into operation, trying to make me tell him where I'd hidden my new cricket bat which he coveted. I hadn't told him, out of cussed ness Ferdinand had been there, too frightened of Gervase to protest, and also Serena, barely four, wide-eyed and uncomprehending.

"I thought you'd forgotten," Ferdinand said. "You've never mentioned it."

"Boys will be bullies."

"Gervase still is."

Which of us, I thought, was not as we had been in the green garden? Donald, Lucy, Thomas, Gervase, Ferdinand, Serena – all Playing there long ago, children's voices calling through the bushes, the adults we would become already forming in the gangling limbs, smooth faces, groping minds. None of those children… none of us… I thought protestingly, could have killed.

Serena came into the sitting-room carrying a white lace negligee and looking oddly shocked. "You've had a woman here!" she said.

"There's no law against it."

Debs, following her, showed a more normal reaction. "Size ten, good perfume, expensive tastes, classy lady," she said. "How am I doing?"

"Not bad."

"Her face cream's in the bathroom," Serena said. "You didn't tell us you had a… a…"

"Girl-friend," I said. "And do you have… a boy-friend?"

She made an involuntary face of distaste and shook her head. Debs put a sisterly arm round Serena's shoulders and said, "I keep telling her to go to a sex therapist or she'll end up a dry old stick, but she won't listen, will you love?"

Serena wriggled free of Debs' arm and strode off with the negligee towards the bedrooms.

"Has anyone ever assaulted her?" I asked Ferdinand. "She has that look."

"Not that I know of." He raised his eyebrows. "She's never said so."

"She's just scared of sex," Debs said blithely. "You wouldn't think anyone would be, these days. Ferdinand's not, are you, bunny?"

Ferdinand didn't react, but said, "We've finished here, I think." He drained his scotch, put down his glass and gave me a cold stare as if to announce that any semi-thaw I might have perceived during the afternoon's exchanges was now at an end. The ice-curtain had come down again with a clang. "if you cut us out with Malcolm," he said, "you'll live to regret it."

Hurt, despite myself, and with a touch of acid, I asked, "Is that again what Alicia says?"

"Damn you, Ian," he said angrily, and made for the door, calling, "Serena, we're going," giving her no choice but to follow.

Debs gave me a mock gruesome look as she went in their wake. "You're Alicia's number one villain, too bad, lovey. You keep your hooks off Malcolm's money or you won't know what hit you." There was a fierce last-minute threat in her final words, and I saw, as the jokey manner slipped, that it was merely a facade which hid the same fears and furies of all the others, and her eyes, as she went, were just as unfriendly.

With regret, I watched from the window as the three of them climbed into Ferdinand's car and drove away. It was an illusion to think one could go back to the uncorrupted emotions of childhood, and I would have to stop wishing for it. I turned away, rinsed out Ferdinand's glass, and went into my bedroom to see how Serena had left it.

The white negligee was lying on my bed. I picked it up and hung it in its cupboard, rubbing my cheek in the fabric and smelling the faint sweet scent of the lady who came occasionally for lighthearted interludes away from a husband who was all but impotent but nevertheless loved. We suited each other well: perfectly happy in ephemeral passion, with no intention of commitment.

I checked round the flat, opened a few letters and listened to the answering machine: there was nothing of note. I spent a while thinking about cars. I had arranged on the telephone two days earlier that the hotel in Cambridge would allow my own car to remain in their park for a daily fee until I collected it, but I couldn't leave it there for ever. If I took a taxi to Epsom station, I thought, I could go up to London by train. In the morning, I would go by train to Cambridge, fetch my car, drive back to the flat, change to the hired car and drive that back to London. It might even be a shade safer, I thought, considering that Ferdinand, and through him the others, would know its colour, make and number, to turn that car in and hire a different one.

The telephone rang. I picked up the receiver and heard a familiar voice, warm and husky, coming to the point without delay. "How about now?" she said. "We could have an hour."

I could seldom resist her. Seldom tried. "An hour would be great. I was just thinking of you."

"Good," she said. "See you."

I stopped worrying about cars and thought of the white lace negligee instead; more enticing altogether. I put two wine glasses on the table by the sofa and looked at my watch. Malcolm would scarcely have reached the Savoy, I thought, but it was worth a try; and in fact he picked up the telephone saying he had that minute walked into the suite.

"I'm glad you're safely back," I said. "I've been a bit detained. I'll be two or three hours yet. Don't get lost."

"Your mother is a cat," he said.

"She saved your skin."

"She called me a raddled old roue done up like a fifth-rate pastry cook

I laughed and could hear his scowl down the line. "What do you want after caviar," he said, "if I order dinner?"

"Chef's special."

"God rot you, you're as bad as your mother."

I put the receiver down with amusement and waited through the twenty minutes it would take until the doorbell rang.

"Hello," she said, as I let her in. "How did the races go?"

I kissed her. "Finished third."

"Well done."

She was older than I by ten or twelve years, also slender auburn- haired and unselfconscious. I fetched the always-waiting champagne from the refrigerator, popped off the cork and poured our drinks. They were a ritual preliminary, really, as we'd never yet finished the bottle and, as usual, after half a glass, there was no point in sitting around on the sofa making small talk.

She exclaimed over the long black bruise down my thigh. "Did you fall off a horse?"

"No, hit a car."

"How careless."

I drew the bedroom curtains to dim the setting western sun and lay with her naked between the sheets. We were practised lovers and comfortable with each other, philosophical over the fact that the coupling was usually better for one than the other, rarely earth- moving for both simultaneously. That day, like the time before, it turned out ecstatic for her, less so for me, and I thought the pleasure of giving such pleasure enough in itself.

"Was it all right for you?" she said finally.

"Yes, of course."

"Not one of your great times."

"They don't come to order. Not your turn, my turn. It's luck."

"A matter of friction and angles," she teased me, repeating what I'd once said. "Who's showering first?"

She liked to return clean to her husband, acknowledging the washing to be symbolic. I showered and dressed, and waited for her in the sitting-room. She was an essential part of my life, a comfort to the body, a contentment in the mind, a bulwark against loneliness. I usually said goodbye with regret, knowing she would return, but on that particular afternoon I said, "Stay," knowing all the same that she couldn't.

"What's the matter?" she said.

"Nothing."

"You shivered."

"Premonition."

"What of?" She was preparing to go, standing by the door.

"That this will be the last time."

"Don't be silly," she said. "I'll be back." She kissed me with what I knew was gratitude, the way I too kissed her. She smiled into my eyes. "I'll be back."

I opened the door for her and she went away lightheartedly, and I knew that the premonition had been not for her, but for myself.