‘It’s been so lovely to see you,’ Serena said, sounding wonderfully as if she meant it.

‘I have enjoyed it.’ As I answered her I knew that my tone was strangely steady, almost cold, in fact, when I did not feel cold towards her in the least, very much the opposite. I cannot explain why, except to say that an Englishman of my generation will always protect himself against the risk of revealing his true feelings. It is his nature and he cannot fight it.

Again, she smiled her smile of the blessed. ‘We’re all fans, you know. We must try and get you down to Waverly.’

‘I’d love it. In the meantime, good luck with everything.’

We touched cheeks and I turned away. Stepping out of the front door, I had not gone more than a few paces when I heard Andrew’s indignant enquiry. ‘Good luck with what? What did he mean by that?’ I confess the temptation was too great and I sneaked back, staying out of sight from the front door.

‘He didn’t mean anything. Good luck. That’s all.’ Serena’s patient and modulated tones dealt with him as one might soothe a frisky horse or dog. ‘Good luck with life.’

‘What an extraordinary thing to say.’ He seemed to clear his throat to draw her attention to him. ‘I’m rather surprised to find him so effulgent and you so welcoming, after everything that happened.’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake.’ They were alone now, or thought they were, and Serena’s tone was less careful. ‘Since the evening you speak of we’ve seen the fall of Communism, the Balkans in flames and the collapse of the British way of life. If we can survive all that, we can surely forget one drunken dinner that got out of hand, forty years ago-’ But by then, Bridget was pulling at my sleeve with a funny look, and I had to come away and out of earshot. If Andrew had more to contribute on the subject after Serena’s outburst it was lost to me. Not for the first time I wondered at how, among the upper classes particularly but perhaps in every section of society, extremely clever women live with very, very stupid men without the husbands’ ever apparently becoming aware of the sacrifice their wives are making daily.

‘That was the greatest treat,’ said Jennifer, as we nudged our way out of the gates and back on to the main road. ‘What luck we had you with us. Wasn’t it, darling?’

I didn’t expect an answer, as I realised that it was almost physically painful for Tarquin to acknowledge another’s superior power at any time. Most of all in his own would-be kingdom. But Jennifer remained looking fixedly at him, driving through the side of her right eye, until he managed a sort of grudging response. ‘Good show,’ he muttered, or something along those lines. I couldn’t really hear.

His envy and Bridget’s misery combined to fill the car with a green mist of resentful, hurt rage, but Jennifer wouldn’t give up. ‘I thought they were so nice. And they’re obviously very fond of you.’

‘Well, he’s very fond of them. Or some of them. Aren’t you? Darling?’ Bridget’s contribution at moments like this was the vocal equivalent of throwing acid. Of course, as I was forced to realise, the downside of remembering what love is came in the form of a clear realisation of what it is not and whatever it was that I was sharing with Bridget was not love. I’d seen this coming. I had hinted as much to my dear old Daddy when I went to have lunch with him. But I don’t think, before that evening at Gresham, I’d appreciated that the buffers were not only in sight but nearly upon us. In fairness, I cannot blame Bridget for feeling cheesed off. She was an intelligent, attractive woman, and she was obliged to accept that, once again, she had wasted several, long years on a dry well, on a bagless hunt, on a dead end. As I have mentioned, she’d made this mistake before, more than once, which I knew well, and until this very evening I’d always taken her line that the men in question were beasts and cads for not releasing her when they must have known it was going nowhere. Instead, they had, as I thought, strung her along until they had stolen her future and her children, who would never now know life. It was at this point, in that darkened car pushing through the Yorkshire lanes, that I suddenly realised that they had not been cads exactly, simply selfish, insensitive, unthinking fools. As I was. And from tomorrow morning I would be sharing their guilt, in the Sad Story of Bridget FitzGerald.

She didn’t speak again until we were in our freezing, damp bedroom. She had started to undress in that angular, vengeful way that I knew so well, talking over her shoulder at me, or through the back of her furious head. ‘The whole thing is so ridiculous.’

‘What thing? There isn’t a “thing”.’

‘Darn right, there isn’t. She’s not at all interested in you. Not in the least.’ She spoke the words crisply with a vivid, sparky relish, as if Serena’s lack of love for me was somehow all her own work, a real achievement to be proud of.

‘No. I don’t suppose she is.’

‘Not in the least.’ The repeat was heightened in volume and acerbity. ‘Anyone can see that. She could hardly remember who you were.’ This was, I thought, a punch below the belt but I decided not to argue. Instead, I settled for looking wounded. I was wasting my time. Bridget, in full flow by now, was unfazed by any perceived sense of injustice. ‘She’d never leave him. You can’t imagine that she would.’

‘No.’

‘And if she did? What makes you think she’d ever want to live with a sad, little depressive like you?’

‘I don’t.’

‘Because she wouldn’t, you know. You can’t believe that would happen in a million light years.’

‘Fine.’

‘Give up all the privileges? All the profile? Go from Countess of Belton to Mrs You? Never.’

For a moment I was going to protest facetiously that she would have been more correctly styled as ‘Lady Serena You’ but thought better of it. I was rather interested by her suggestion that Serena and Andrew had a ‘profile.’ What did that mean? What is a ‘profile’ in this context? I suppose Bridget’s rage had now taken on a life of its own and her editing faculties were impeded. ‘I dare say it is unlikely,’ I said.

‘I’ll say. That type never do.’

‘She’s a “type,” is she? Well, that’s encouraging. I must look out for some more of them.’

‘Oh, fuck off.’ I cannot complain at this since I deserved it.

But by the time I too had undressed and we were both shivering beneath our inadequate coverings in our ugly carved bed, she had calmed down. Up until now her anger had protected me against feeling guilt, but I was not to get off scot-free. Just before I turned out the light she lowered her book and looked over at me. ‘What did I do wrong?’ Her voice was quite gentle again and the soft Irish burr that I always found so beguiling gave it a poignancy that reminded me painfully how much I hate to hurt.

I shook my head and gave what I hoped was a warm smile, which in that temperature was quite a challenge. ‘It’s not your fault,’ I answered her in what I felt was a suitably genuine tone. ‘You’ve done nothing wrong. It isn’t you, it’s me.’ As one mouths these oh so familiar sentiments, and this last, hackneyed sentence in particular, one likes to feel that one is expressing a noble and generous sentiment. That you are ‘taking the blame’ for the failure, ‘shouldering the responsibility’ and so on. In fact, of course, this is dishonest, as any serial love-rat, to lift a title from the tabloids, could tell you, and we are almost all love-rats at some stage. The phrases are a kind of lazy shorthand, designed to deflect the brickbats hurtling at your head and bring all discussion of the topic to a close as quickly as possible.

Bridget, quite rightly, felt she deserved more than this craven and mendacious reply. ‘Please,’ she said. ‘I mean it.’ And her tone was now pulling at my heart strings to an uncomfortable degree. ‘Is there anything I could have done that would have made it better?’