‘But you never tried to find out?’

‘I didn’t see the point. What would I have gained? Someone poking their nose in where it wasn’t wanted? Some emotional cripple who felt he had the right to lean on me because I’d carried his child? At one stage I thought it might be George Tremayne. I was pretty sure later that it wasn’t, but imagine what it would have been like having him getting sloshed at the kitchen table.’ I grimaced. ‘So, no. I decided to battle through it alone.’

‘How were you sure? That it wasn’t George?’

She thought for a moment. ‘I heard that he was having trouble getting his wife pregnant. That rather chubby girl whose father made cars. She’d got two children by a first husband, so it couldn’t have been her.’ She nodded, satisfied with her own conclusions. ‘Anyway, having Archie put me back on the straight and narrow. It was a bumpy road for a bit, even if it was straight, and God knows it was narrow. But it led me to Harry.’

‘So there was a happy ending.’

She smiled. ‘That’s so nice. To hear Harry described as my happy ending. These days everyone who says his name bursts into tears. But they’re wrong and you’re right. He was my happy ending. And now,’ she stood, stretching herself, ‘I really must go to bed or I’ll die.’

I was deep in a dream involving Neil Kinnock and Joan Crawford and a woman who used to work for my mother as a cleaner called Mrs Pointer. We were all trying to have a picnic on Beachy Head, but the tartan rug kept blowing up and spilling everything, and for some reason we couldn’t weight it down. Until we decided to lie on it to hold it steady, but how can that have worked and what did we do with the food? Which didn’t seem to matter much, as Joan was squeezing into my back and she slid an arm round my waist, letting her hand slide down as she did so, and… I woke up. Except I hadn’t woken up, because although it was fairly dark and I wasn’t at a picnic any more, I could still feel Joan’s body pressed into mine and a gentle hand enfolding my erect penis, and then a voice said ‘are you awake?’ very softly, and it didn’t sound at all like Joan’s. Not a bit. It wasn’t even American. I thought about this for a moment, because the voice was familiar and I felt I should know it but I didn’t recognise it until it spoke my name, and suddenly I knew beyond any doubt… it was Serena’s. It was Serena Belton’s voice and she was here beside me, with her hand on my penis. And then I still couldn’t believe I wasn’t dreaming, because this, after all, was my lifelong dream, and I began to wonder whether I was in a dream within a dream, when you think you’ve woken up but you haven’t. And I might have gone on thinking this for a bit longer if her lips had not nestled into the side of my cheek and I turned, and she was there.

In the flesh. In my arms. In my bed.

‘Is this really happening?’ I whispered, afraid that if I spoke too loudly the whole mirage would shimmer and disappear. It was very early dawn and the soft, dim, grey light had begun to creep in through the cracks in the curtains, lightening the room just enough for me to make her out, her shining, sacred head on the pillow next to mine.

‘It is if you want it to.’

I smiled. ‘Do you make a habit of stealing into men’s rooms at night?’

‘Only when they’re in love with me,’ she said.

I still could not accept this gift from heaven. ‘But why? I know you don’t love me. We had a long discussion about it this very afternoon.’ Of all things, I didn’t want to frighten her away, but I did want to understand.

‘I love your love,’ she said. ‘I don’t pretend to share it, and when we were young I doubt that I was much more than amused. But as the years went on and bad things happened, I always knew one man in the world at least loved me. And that was you. Seeing you again reminded me of it.’

‘Is that why you got me down here?’

‘You make me feel safe. When we met up in Yorkshire I felt glad to see you and that was why. I am safe in your love. I wish we saw more of you. I don’t know why we drifted out of each other’s lives.’

‘I thought it was because of what Damian said.’

She shook her head. ‘I knew it was nonsense. I knew it straight away but even more as time went on. He was in pain, that’s all.’

‘So was I by the end of that dinner.’ For the first time in my life, I could envisage a day when I would find it funny.

She stroked my hair, or what was left of it. ‘You should have stayed. You both should have stayed on afterwards and laughed.’

‘I couldn’t.’ She did not argue, and together we let the bitter memory go and returned to the glorious present. Suddenly I felt the freedom to touch her surge through me, like a child who finally lets himself believe that it really is Christmas morning. I reached up and traced the outline of her lips with my finger.

She kissed it gently as I did so. ‘You may not know it, but you have seen me through some dark times and this is your reward.’ As she spoke she moved closer and brought her mouth to mine, and we began, as the phrase has it, to make love. And while many times in my life those words have not been an accurate description of the activity they refer to, on that occasion they were as true as the Gospel. What we were making in that bed on that blessed morn was love. Pure love. Nor was there the slightest diminution of passion because the woman in my arms was a matron in her fifties rather than the lissom girl I had hungered for so many years before. She was my Serena at last. I held her in my arms and, for this one time perhaps, I was hers. I had finally arrived at my yearned-for destination. And although I was so aroused by her presence that I thought I would explode at one more touch, still, when I entered her, the sensation that filled me with a hot glow like molten lava was not just sexual excitement but total happiness. It sounds sentimental, which I am not as a rule, but that moment of being inside Serena, of feeling myself held by her body, for the first and presumably the only time in my life, after waiting for forty years, was the single happiest moment I have ever known, the climax, the very peak of my existence, nor do I expect to equal it before the grave claims me.

I do not seek recognition as a skilful lover. I assume I am no better and no worse than most men, but if ever I knew what I was doing that was the day. I dare say I should have felt guilty, but I didn’t. Her husband had the gift of her whole, adult life and he would never know the value of it. I did, and I felt that I deserved my hour without enraging too many of the gods. I am glad and relieved to relate that my tired, fat, flabby body rose to the challenge of the chance of paradise and never have I been so entirely engrossed in the present to the exclusion of all else. For those minutes I had no future and no past, only her. We made love three times before she slipped away, and when I stared at the gathered silk canopy above my head I knew I was a different man from the one who had lain down to sleep. I had made love to a woman I was absolutely and entirely in love with. The woman who held my heart had opened her body to the rest of me. There is no greater joy allowed us. Not on earth. And, in echo of Candida, I knew, because of that single episode, because of this one hour in a life of many years, because I had known real, unconditional bliss I could never again be a sad man. I thought it then, I think it now, and I am grateful. If Damian’s search led me to this, then I was paid in full and far in excess of any mortal man’s deserts.