'Jesus Christ! Are you mad?' I saw then that he was nervous. He was frightened that the desk clerk at some big hotel would challenge him in some way and he'd be revealed not just as an adulterer but as a bungling adulterer. Certainly Tessa in such a situation would not make it easy for him. She'd revel in it and make the most of it. 'Lisl's,' he said. 'What a thought.'

He chewed a nail. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised at this aspect of Dicky. I'd discovered long ago that womanizers like him are often uneasy and incapable when faced with the minor logistics of such adventures: hotel bookings, plane tickets, car rentals. The sort of man who will boast of his doings to all comers at his club will go to absurd lengths in attempts to deceive the concierge, the waiters or the room maid. Perhaps that's why they do it.

'Well,' I said. 'You won't…'

He cut me short. He wasn't going to let me give him a negative reply. Dicky was a grandmaster at squeezing the right sort of replies from people. Now would come the softening up: a barrage of incontrovertible platitudes. 'Your sister-in-law is one of the most remarkable women I've ever met, Bernard. Glorious!'

'Yes,' I said.

He poured more coffee for me without asking if I wanted it. Cream too. 'And your wife of course,' he added. 'Two truly extraordinary women: brainy, beautiful and with compelling charm.'

'Yes,' I said.

'Fiona took the wrong road of course. But that can happen to anyone.' By Dicky's standards this was an astonishingly indulgent attitude to human frailty. Perhaps he saw that in my face, for he immediately added, 'Or almost anyone.'

'Yes, almost anyone.'

'Daphne is astonishing too,' said Dicky, delivering this accolade with distinctly less emphasis. 'Creative, artistic.'

'And hard-working,' I said.

He was less sure of that. 'Well, yes, I suppose she is.'

'Daphne was in good form the other night,' I said. 'Did I thank you for dinner?'

'Gloria wrote.'

'Oh, good.'

'I only wish I could give Daphne the sort of support and encouragement she needs,' said Dicky. 'But she lives on a mountain top.' He looked at me. I nodded. He said, 'Artists are all like that: creative people. They live in harmony with nature. But it's not so easy for those around them.'

'Oh, really? What form does this take? In Daphne's case, I mean?'

'She's only truly happy when she's painting. She told me that. She has to have time to herself. She spends hours up in her studio. I encourage her, of course. It's the least I can do for her.'

'You won't find Tessa needs any time to herself,' I said.

He smiled nervously. 'No. Tessa is like me: very much a social animal.'

'May I ask why you are going to Berlin?'

'Why we are going,' Dicky corrected me. 'You'll have to come along, Bernard. No matter what reservations you may nurture about my peccadilloes… No, no.' He raised a hand as if warding off my interjections but in fact I had not moved. 'No, I understand your reservations. Far be it from me to persuade any man to do something against his conscience. You know how I feel about that kind of thing.'

'I didn't say it was against my conscience.'

'Ahh!'

'It's not against my conscience, it's against the German legal code. The old German law, that made incest a crime, still applies in the case of a man committing adultery with his sister-in-law.'

'I've never heard of that,' said Dicky, suspecting, rightly, that I was inventing this historic clause on the spur of the moment. 'Are you sure?'

I turned slightly towards the phone on his table and said, 'I can get someone in the legal department to look it up for you.'

'No,' said Dicky. 'Don't do that for the moment. I might go downstairs and look it up myself.'

I said, 'You didn't explain why I had to go.'

'To Berlin? It has been ordained that you, me and Frank Harrington have a pow-wow in Big B to go through some damned stuff the Americans want.'

'Can't it wait?'

'Written instructions from the D-G himself. No way to wriggle out of that one, Gunga Din.'

'And you're taking Tessa?'

'Yes. She has these bonus tickets that airlines give to first-class passengers who fly a great deal. She has to use up the free mileage.'

'So you don't have to pay Tessa's fare?'

'It was too good an opportunity to turn away.'

'I suppose it was.'

'I should have married someone like Tessa, I suppose,' said Dicky.

I noticed it wasn't Tessa's unique attractions he wanted but only someone in her category. Whether this left Daphne wanting in brains, wealth, beauty, chic, charm or sexual performance was left unspecified. 'Tessa is already married,' I said.

'Don't be so priggish, Bernard. Tessa is a grown-up woman. She's sensible enough to decide these things for herself.'

'When is this meeting?'

'Frank is being difficult about precise times. We have to fit in around his golf and bridge and his jaunts with his army cronies.'

'You've booked the hotel?'

'They get so full at this time of year,' said Dicky.

I heard a defensive tone in his voice. On a hunch I said, 'Have you booked it in my name?'

'Yes…' Momentarily he was flustered, but he recovered quickly. 'I told the hotel that we are not yet sure who will be using the suite. They think we are a company.'

I was damned angry but Dicky had played his cards with customary finesse. I couldn't see anything specific that I could complain about that Dicky wouldn't be able to explain away. 'When do we leave?'

'Friday. Tessa insists on going to some bloody opera that's only on that night. Pinky is arranging the tickets. I'm hoping for a preliminary meeting with Frank and his people on Friday afternoon. We should be through by Monday evening. Tuesday evening at the latest.'

There goes my weekend with Gloria and the children. Dicky saw my face and said, 'You'll have days off to make up for the loss of the weekend.'

'Yes, of course,' I said, although it wasn't much fun to be monitoring the weeds in the garden, and fixing my own lunch, while the children were at school and Gloria was slaving in the office.

'You're getting to be very surly lately,' Dicky observed while he was pouring the last of the coffee for himself. 'Don't fly off the handle: I'm just telling you that for your own good.'

'You're very considerate, Dicky.'

'I can't understand you,' Dicky persisted. 'You've got that gorgeous creature doting on you and still you go around with a long face. What's the problem? Tell me, Bernard, what is the problem?' Although the words were arranged like questions, Dicky made it quite clear from his tone and delivery that he didn't want an answer.

I nodded. It was best to nod with Dicky. Like the Japanese he framed his questions in the expectation of affirmative responses.

'Brooding won't bring Fiona back. You must pull yourself together, Bernard.' He gave me a 'chins up' smile.

I felt like telling Dicky exactly what I thought about him and his plan to implement me in the cuckolding of George but he wouldn't have understood the reasons for my anger. I nodded and left.

At the end of the working day I drove homeward with Gloria but we didn't go directly to number thirteen Balaklava Road. She said she wanted to collect some clothes from her parents' home. The actual reason for the visit was that she'd promised to look in and see the house was safe while they were away on holiday. They lived in a smart, burglar-afflicted suburb near Epsom, a few stations beyond us on the Southern Railway's commuter routes.

The Kents – her parents had changed their name after escaping from Hungary – lived in a four-bedroom double-glazed neo-Tudor house with a gravel 'in and out' front drive on which their two cars could be parked and still leave room enough for the tanker that delivered their heating oil.