Sunday

In the dream, Milo and I were digging holes while Daisy watched — whoever finished first would marry her. Milo’s hole went down six feet and he was standing shoulder-deep in it, about to win, when his ribs flew apart like broken laths and the heart inside them became a brain — then a tumour. As the tumour wriggled on the ground, I heaped rocks on it. ‘Ian,’ it cried, turning into Ollie’s face, ‘Ian …’

The knock on the door was a gentle knock, as if intended for only one of us, and it came with a whispered ‘Ian'. I slid from the sheets, appalled to be awake. After two hours on the rug with Rufus, I’d only just gone to bed.

‘Ian!’ I heard again.

‘Coming!’ I whispered back, trying not to wake Em.

I was coming but taking my time about it since the voice outside the door was Ollie’s — the real Ollie, not the Ollie in my dream. My first thought was that Daisy had confessed to him. And though I realised before I turned the handle that a cuckolded husband, out for revenge, would be hammering and screaming at the door, not whispering through it, my hand on the knob was shaking, and not only from the alcohol of the night before.

‘There you are,’ Ollie whispered, though I was barely there at all.

He was wearing black nylon leggings and a black nylon top, as if slicked in oil. I felt like the slithery one but it was he who looked the part.

‘Come on,’ he hissed, ‘it’s time.’

‘What?’

‘It’s time for the race.’

‘Which race?’

‘The bike race. We talked about it last night, remember.’

I didn’t.

‘Let’s get cracking before the others are up.’

Hung-over and half naked, I didn’t have the energy to argue. I didn’t have the energy to race, either, but that was beside the point. Even sober and dressed, I would have found it hard to resist Ollie, his hands tensing in readiness, the nerves twitching in his cheek. I grabbed a T-shirt, shorts and trainers as softly as I could, desperate that Em should sleep on. Despite my nausea, relief flooded through me. Ollie didn’t know about last night. Nor — full of life as he was — did he appear to be dying.

How I dressed and got downstairs I’ve no idea. My body must have done it for me.

The double wooden doors to the garage were wide open, with two bikes propped against them. Crouched beside the spokes, Ollie was angrily pumping tyres.

The bikes were lean, with handlebars like rams’ horns.

‘Where did these come from?’ I said.

‘I rented them. There’s a shop in the village.’

‘They look pretty old.’

‘They are old. They stopped making bikes like these in the 1970s. Take the red one. You’ll need to raise the saddle. Daisy used it last.’

My bike at home is a mountain bike: thick frame, broad saddle, high handles, fat tyres. This bike had drop handlebars coiled in black tape, and the frame and wheels looked so thin I feared they’d buckle under me. Worst of all was the saddle, short in length, narrow in width, and viciously tapered at the front: even Daisy, with her little bum, must have struggled to perch on it, but at least she didn’t have testicles to worry about. I wondered which would be worse, the injuries I’d get from staying in the saddle or those I’d suffer from falling off.

Though Daisy’s legs are much shorter than mine, I raised the saddle only half an inch. I would ride with my bum in the air, as jockeys do.

‘Helmet?’ Ollie said, proffering a yellow plastic vented dome.

‘Do we have to?’ I said. A helmet would be horrendous in the heat.

‘Up to you, mate.’

‘Are you wearing yours?’

A matching yellow helmet sat high on his head. But he hadn’t yet fastened the strap.

‘Not if you’re not,’ he said.

It didn’t seem reckless to do without.

We rode in parallel down the drive, Ollie to the left of the grass seam, me — wobbling — to the right. Reaching down to grip the drop handlebars felt precarious, so I rode with my hands on top of the fork.

At the end of the drive, we turned right into the lane. The blue sky had gone brown towards the horizon, as though scorched by the heat of the earth.

‘We’ll stick together to the coast,’ Ollie said, ‘so you get to know the route. Then turn round and race back. It’s only twenty miles. It won’t kill us.’

‘Speak for yourself,’ I said.

Of course it occurred to me that Ollie’s energy level was abnormal — that the brain tumour could be making him manic.

I even worried about the effects a vigorous bike ride might have: under stress, mightn’t a tumour swell and burst? But there was no resisting his enthusiasm.

As we rode, he rattled on about bikes. Raleigh now imported them from Taiwan, he said. And did I know that tubular tyres, like wine, improve with age? Oh, and by the way, when Reg Harris came out of retirement to become British sprint champion at the age of fifty-four, he was riding a Raleigh just like ours. Some of the talk was too technical for me: the relative virtues of derailleur gears and Sturmey-Archers, of cutaway lugs, light alloy forks and ring-brazed frames. He said he’d learned it not from cycling magazines but from his father, who when they came on holiday here had rented bikes from the same shop.

Ollie aside, the day was silent, just the whirr of spokes. The narrow lane ran through high arching hedgerows with wheat (not yet harvested) massing behind them and the two of us between, thus:

-(..)-

In his funereal nylon, Ollie set a gentle pace at first, cruising the three miles to the next village before forking left at a duck pond. After that, as we entered a pine forest, he pushed on. The day was too hot already and the shade between the firs brought no relief. My breath was heavier than Ollie’s, my T-shirt wetter. I hung back, saving myself for the return. Not that I cared as much as he did about winning. But I didn’t want to lose by a mile.

‘This is the easy bit,’ he said, slowing down so I could catch up. ‘There are two big hills before the coast.’

‘Oh good,’ I said.

He looked at me in mock suspicion.

‘You weren’t up to any naughty business last night?’

‘What?’ ‘Marital nooky — it dilutes the testosterone. You seem a bit sluggish. Real athletes never have sex before a race.’

‘It’s not a race, Ollie. It’s a Sunday fun run.’

‘Fun, yes. But also Round Two of the bet.’

It wasn’t that I had forgotten but I needed to hear him confirm it.

‘With five thousand quid riding on it.’

‘Unless you want to double that. Feeling lucky?’

Did I say that or did he? I can’t remember now. My palms were sticky and my head hurt from the night before.

I’d got lucky with Daisy. Or had I? Nothing felt real.

‘Tempted?’

‘No.’

‘Where’s your steel, man? Don’t be a pussy.’

Silence hung heavy in the pines. The only breeze was our own momentum.

‘OK, we’ll double it.’

‘Done.’

It was weak of me to get into it — but also logical. I was one—nil up already. And though I wouldn’t call myself fit, I do ride to school every day, and had stepped up my mileage in the holidays, not (as Em alleged) to prepare for the contest but for the pleasure. Ollie, meanwhile, was ill.

For the next few miles the route was flat and I didn’t touch my gears. But as we left the forest and reached the first hill — a short but steep ascent near a pig farm — I changed down. Whether too jerkily or in the wrong direction I don’t know, but something jammed and clunked and the chain came off.

Ollie was off his bike and seeing to mine almost before I’d dismounted. The chain had caught between the sprocket and the frame. I thought he would need a lever to free it but a minute of writhing and it came clear. He fed the chain back on the teeth then held the rear wheel in the air and ran through the gears.

Behind him pigs were nosing through dry mud. The hedge swarmed with brambles and late-summer flies.

‘I meant to warn you that the gears are sensitive,’ he said, handing the bike back, his fingers as oil-black as his clothes. ‘You should be fine now.’

I didn’t doubt he’d taken the better bike but I trusted him to put mine in order.

‘I’ll wheel it to the top,’ I said. We weren’t yet racing, after all.

He pushed off, calling back over his shoulder: ‘Daisy did the same thing. She hasn’t a clue about gears, either. You’re a right pair.’

I took it slowly up the hill, unable to suppress the memory, silently climbing to the summit with her, sweating, panting, soaked to the skin. I had always loved her. And last night she had loved me back.

Ollie was hovering on the ridge like a vulture.

‘Suffering?’ he said.

‘A little.’

‘You stayed up talking, then?’

‘Yes.’

I remounted, ready to roll. Though the pig farm lay behind us, the smell lingered in my nostrils.

Once we were back, I’d catch her in private, to discuss the next step.

‘How was Daisy?’ he said.

‘Sorry?’

‘How did she seem?’

‘Why ask me? She’s your wife.’

‘Doesn’t mean I understand her. Do you understand Em?’

Did I? Not an unkind bone in her body, people said of her.

But bones are neither kind nor unkind. Bones are just bones. And Em was just Em, affectionate when I deserved affection but angry when I didn’t, which seemed to be increasingly the case.

‘Daisy’s been distracted lately,’ he said. ‘I don’t know why.’

It couldn’t be the tumour, if he’d not told her. Was it Milo then? But she had assured me they were just friends.

‘She seemed fine,’ I said.

The descent wasn’t steep but it was long and my neck hurt from reaching down to squeeze the brakes. In the flat along the bottom, the fields were being watered and where the spray fell across the road, mixing with dirt, the surface was muddy. Ollie, just ahead of me, had no mudguards and I laughed to myself as a stripe appeared up the middle of his back — a tyre-wide line of mud, brown on black, like the mark of Cain.

Em was my rock. But rocks aren’t amenable, rocks offer no comfort, rocks can crush and kill — and lately she had hardened against me. Perhaps it would be better if we parted. Someone else could give her a child, while — with Ollie dead and Milo off the scene — I made a life with Daisy.

Mens sana in corpore sano, they say. But sometimes, when I’m exercising, wild thoughts invade me and I’m not what I am.

As we climbed the second hill, Ollie pressed ahead. It was another mile before I caught him up at a T-junction.

‘It’s straight across here,’ he said, ‘then down to the sea. OK?’

Though we rode alongside, he seemed to have run out of conversation. ‘How was Daisy?’ he had asked, clearly worried. Had he intuited that he might lose her, even before he died?

As we neared the coast, the landscape changed from grassland to bracken, a whiff of brine mixed in with sage and thyme. Bank holiday Sunday was the highpoint of the summer season, but it was early morning, and the beach we were heading for remote — the last half-mile an unmade road — and when we finally hit the shingle (a hit it was, the small smooth stones subsiding under our tyres and stopping us in a flurry and a smack), there were only a few sad fishermen to see, their angled green umbrellas serving as parasols. We dismounted and wheeled our bikes over the shingle, stopping at the tideline and sitting down, each of us with a drinks bottle unclipped from the frame, the water tepid and tasting of plastic but refreshing for all that. Our bikes sat upended behind us, like two pairs of giant spectacles, no breeze to stir the wheels, the sea a putrid turquoise. With our shoes and socks off, we sat throwing pebbles at a wooden stick (one point for hitting, three for knocking it over, first to twenty), a game that might have become serious and which I suggested, only half joking, might replace the bike race, but which Ollie, 17—16 behind, abruptly terminated. Time was short, he said, and we ought to go. I cooled my toes before we did. The waves were too languid to call breakers, flopping pathetically at my feet.

‘Ready?’ Ollie said.

‘Ready.’

‘First one to the house makes tea.’

‘Do you want Assam or Earl Grey?’

‘Fuck you.’

Up the unmade road, a fisherman was arriving with his gear and stared as we panted by. With those long legs of his, Ollie had all the advantages, and I was tempted to let him go. His morale would suffer terribly if I beat him again, and by losing I could atone for last night. Yet I owed it to him to compete. He would expect no less of me.

At the T-junction he was ahead by fifty yards or so, a gap

I could easily narrow if I chose, though he, for his part, could surely open it up again, since — terminally ill or not — he seemed to have plenty in reserve.

It was a cat-and-mouse game. Competitive, certainly, but not life-and-death. I wanted to win but there would be benefits in losing. So I told myself till we reached the second hill.

In retrospect, I may have misread what happened. I’d seen how quickly Ollie could negotiate hills, but he made no move on the first one and I’d little difficulty keeping him in my sights. On the plateau, I closed right up, into his slipstream. We were hunched low for maximum speed, our bodies flat against the frame, our heads beneath our shoulders. Glancing round, he seemed surprised to see me, then smiled. There are friendly smiles, and sarcastic smiles, and because I couldn’t believe Ollie was feeling friendly — with me up his backside, not shaken off — I decided he was taunting me: Wimp, sneak, get alongside, come on you puny whipster, overtake me and set the pace for a while, why should I do all the work here? Provoked, I pedalled harder, my heart revving and my breath coming in clumps. As I crept up by his rear wheel, I was so focused on passing him I didn’t see what happened, just felt the jolt, the judder of something striking my front wheel, an object large enough to tilt the bike to one side and make me career off left, braking, wrestling, struggling to stay upright, with the grass verge rushing at me and a metal fence which I knew would smash my skull and be the death of me because I wasn’t wearing a helmet, an omission which was surely Ollie’s fault for having offered me one so half-heartedly. All this in an instant before I skidded to a halt.

I stood there trembling but unharmed. The bike was upright, and whatever struck the wheel hadn’t broken the spokes. I looked ahead to where Ollie was streaming up the hill. I looked behind to where the offending object lay in the road: a wooden branch rather than a metal rod, but there were no trees around and I hadn’t seen it lying in the road. To examine it would take time and Ollie was already way ahead.

I felt shaky, like someone in a road crash too shocked to recall what led up to it. But I did remember Ollie’s face, and that smile — sinister, even malevolent — and then the bang to the wheel which, were I not an experienced cyclist, would surely have sent me headlong.

Ruthless though he was, I couldn’t believe my old friend had thrown a heavy branch or swung an iron bar with the intention of wrecking my spokes or, worse, of knocking me off. I couldn’t believe it and yet I did. That he’d not looked round, even once, only clinched it.

I set off in pursuit, thinking back to the night before — Daisy’s dreamy face, the flow of her body, her nails raking my back in excitement. She must have been waiting for me, unmarried, all these years. To Ollie — a cheat and liar — I owed nothing, not even guilt. I’d already taken Daisy off him. Now I would take ten grand off him, too.

Propelled by rage and self-righteousness, I caught him on the far side of the hill. For a moment, his manner disarmed me. He was ambling, barely pedalling at all in fact, and as I drew alongside he smiled — with no hint of malice — and said: ‘You all right? I was beginning to worry.’

‘I’m fine,’ I said, ‘no thanks to you.’

‘Fighting talk, eh? Good.’

‘You bet I’m fighting.’

‘Great.’

I couldn’t be sure Ollie had tried to make me crash. But a sense of outrage fired me up. Twenty years back, he’d stolen Daisy from me. He’d not scruple to steal Em from me, either. He deserved to be beaten.

And I think I could have beaten him. There were only four miles left, along the flat, and I was pumped up, adrenalin coursing through me, the shock of my near catastrophe sending a chill to combat the heat. For two miles or so I set the pace, with Ollie in my slipstream biding his time. When he finally made his move, I pretended I’d no energy left and tucked in behind, calculating how long to wait before accelerating past again. Whether I took him half a mile out or outsprinted him up the farmhouse drive seemed an irrelevance, since I felt in control. Even when he upped the pace and — as I responded — my foot slipped off the pedal (which painfully shinned me and left a cross-hatch of scratches up my leg), the slip was over in an instant, and I felt confident about clawing him back. Why I didn’t — why Ollie drew steadily away — still baffles me. I suppose that I hit the wall marathon runners talk about. Or that I was suffering from sunstroke, dehydration and lack of sleep. Or lacked the sadism to humiliate him a second time. He was in my sights and I didn’t give up till the last two hundred yards. But when he turned into the drive, I knew it was over: at that point he could have fallen off and still got home ahead of me. Easing off, I leaned down to examine my wheel again. The spokes were intact, the tyres fully pumped up. Hardest of all to admit, the object that struck my hub had probably not been thrown by Ollie. He had beaten me fair and square.

I no longer felt guilty about Daisy. Fucking her was due punishment for all the times Ollie had fucked with me. We were even.

I skidded to a halt then flopped forward on the bike frame, like a rower collapsing on his oars at the end of a boat race.

‘One—all,’ he said. ‘When’s the decider?’

As a rule I don’t like discussing money; few Englishmen do. Perhaps if I earned more I’d be less inhibited. But teachers are paid badly, as everyone knows, and primary-school teachers — especially those, like me, unfairly denied promotion — do worst of all. All I’ve ever wanted is for Em and me to have what other middle-class professionals take for granted — a decent house, foreign holidays, a new car now and then. Our salaries alone could never buy those. To live as we do, I’ve had to raise our income by other means.

I’m not a big-time gambler compared to some I know. But my father instilled the habit when he used me as his runner. And it persisted at university and beyond. Betting shops, poker games, fruit and slot machines are in the genes. And more recently, there have been websites, so various and alluring and easy to use. I began with just the one, but playing on several makes more sense, just as spreading your bets does — safety in numbers. It’s the sites that have run me into debt, I don’t mind admitting. I had hoped to wean myself off them during the summer. All that cycling, golf and going to the gym was meant to distract me. It didn’t work. Every afternoon I stopped off somewhere for a flutter or roll. And at home in the evening there was the Internet. It needn’t have been like that. I could have cooked supper, taken Em to the pub, sat watching television. But most nights she either fell asleep on the sofa or went to her room to work, and that’s when temptation came back in. Marooned, I’d turn on the PC for something to do, and before I knew it, three hours later, I’d be down a few hundred quid, or occasionally, gloriously, up a few hundred, my finances radically altered without my even having to leave the house.

It’s not a sickness. I’m no addict. I could stop tomorrow. But if I stopped I’d no longer experience the moments of triumph. ‘You’re afraid of happiness,’ Em once said. She has a point. I think happiness is overrated. A man should experience the full range of emotions, bad as well as good. But I’m not afraid of happiness. I’ve known happiness on slots and fruits, and I’ve known it on sites. And once you’ve tasted it, life’s never the same. When you’re on a roll, flush with dosh from an ace and king. Or when you’re skint and an inch from quitting, but there’s a horse at 50—1 you put your last tenner on and it comes in. Those are moments stronger than love.

When Em first discovered my habit she was upset, naturally — not so much because she had to bail me out (with a couple of thousand she had been saving for a holiday) but because I’d kept the truth from her. She felt betrayed, she said, as if she’d been living with a stranger. I promised to give up, and I did, for nearly a year. The second time I was down less than a thousand, a piddling sum. But before Em agreed to clear the debt she made me promise to contact Gamblers Anonymous. I did look at their site — a site for people addicted to sites — but having read the stuff on the noticeboard I knew it wasn’t for me. I’m a middle-class professional in a responsible job, not a loser. The common refrain from the partners of addicts goes: He doesn’t know when to stop. I’m not like that. I know my limits. If I go further than seems rational, it’s not from weakness but from strength — because I know my luck’s about to turn, with a 27 on the wheel, say, or a 9 of diamonds.

Most punters are like my dad. They tell you they’ve studied the form on the racing pages. But for all the good it does them, they might as well close their eyes and use a pin. The same with poker: when my dad played with his cronies, he used to reckon he knew which cards they were holding from their expressions — yet he’d finish out of pocket every time. I’m not like that. I have a system. One of my tricks is to use variants on 1729, which (as all mathematicians know) is a special number. On a roulette wheel 7 sits next to 29. And whenever I’ve won with four of a kind in stud poker, it’s been with aces, twos, sevens or nines. It’s a matter of keeping your head and sticking to the laws of probability. Did you realise that with two dice there are six ways of throwing seven but only five ways of throwing six? Knowledge like that can change your life.

If I lost my way in the weeks before Badingley, Campbell Foster and the tribunal were to blame. I had been looking forward to a weekend away because temptation would be removed: out in the sticks there would be no betting shops or Internet, and even if there were I’d be too proud to frequent them with Daisy and Ollie around.

Yes, Badingley would be a break, I thought — till Ollie conned me into making the biggest bet of my life.

There was a surprise when we entered the living room. Though it wasn’t yet ten, Em and Daisy were sitting there fully dressed. And opposite them, on the sofa (the sofa where I’d lain with Daisy a few hours earlier, and which I imagined might still be damp with our exertions), sat a stranger. He was a man of about sixty, small in build and with the kind of face usually seen only on toby jugs: bulging eyes, slobbery lips, bulbous nose and raw-red cheeks. A local tradesman, I thought, come here to flog us fish or firewood, until I took in his suit, with its cheap city sheen. He looked awkward in it, not as a farm worker might, wearing it as Sunday best, nor because the day was too hot for ties, but because the boldness of the stripes and double-breasted collar overwhelmed him.

‘Darling,’ Daisy said, addressing Ollie not me, ‘Mr Charles is here about the house.’

‘It’s Quarles, in fact, with a Q,’ the toby-jug man said, standing to shake hands. ‘Albert Quarles.’ His left heel was built up, I noticed — three or four times as thick as the right.

‘Ah, our landlord,’ Ollie said. ‘We didn’t know you were in Badingley.’

‘I’m not, as a rule,’ Mr Quarles said. ‘But I felt it imperative to pay a visit.’

‘Imperative’ sounded curious, coming from him. But it worked on Ollie.

‘Do please sit down,’ he said. ‘I trust the girls have offered you coffee.’

‘Yes, indeed,’ Mr Quarles said, nodding at the cafetière on the table. ‘And excellent it is too.’

‘Right then. How can we help?’

I could tell from his excessive politeness that Ollie was pissed off. He was hot, he was hungry and he wanted a shower.

‘I had two reasons for calling. First, to check that you were happy with the accommodation.’

‘Perfectly,’ Ollie said, not looking at Daisy.

‘Because I understood from Mrs Banks you had some complaints.’

I remembered Daisy describing Mrs Banks as a battleaxe.

‘Whatever gave her that idea?’

‘She said you said that the house looked damp and unlived in.’

‘Me? Really?’

‘And that the owner should be strung up.’

‘Not at all.’

‘She was adamant.’

Ollie shook his head, and the two of them sat in silence, not sure where to go next, until Daisy spoke.

‘That must have been me, Mr Quarles.’ I looked forward to her giving him what for but all she said was: ‘When we arrived it was raining heavily and there were a couple of leaks.’

‘Leaks? I’m not aware of any leaks.’

‘Well, they sounded like leaks. The point is it was late, and dark, and I was tired after the journey, and not at my best, and I may have said something I didn’t really mean.’

‘I don’t often rent the place out,’ Mr Quarles said, ready to be placated, ‘and I pride myself on satisfying clients.’

‘We’re very happy here,’ Ollie said.

‘And we’re sorry for upsetting Mrs Banks.’

Daisy isn’t usually deferential. Was she afraid of a scene? Desperate to get shot of Mr Quarles? Or out of sorts from the previous night?

‘That’s all right,’ Mr Quarles said. ‘Between ourselves, Mrs Banks can be oversensitive.’

‘You mean she dragged you all the way here to throw us out?’ Ollie said.

‘No. I had a second reason for calling. I was intrigued by what you said when you booked, Mr Moore.’

‘I’ll get more coffee,’ Daisy said, now the discussion had moved on. Her face looked pale, her hair lacking its usual sheen. Had last night been too intense for her? Doubtless she’d lain awake, guilty and fretful, then been forced downstairs by Mr Quarles’s arrival. Em’s presence must have been difficult too: there she was, full of goodwill, helping to cope with the strange intruder, unaware that Daisy had seduced me.

‘In your email you said you’d stayed here before,’ Mr Quarles said.

‘That’s right, as a teenager.’

‘Under the name Moore?’

‘Yes. My father’s name.’

‘It’s odd. My father used the place as a holiday home and only let it out three or four times a year at most. I’m the same.’

‘We were lucky then.’

‘He kept a visitors’ book. When I looked through I couldn’t find the name Moore.’

‘I recognise the house, the barn, everything. We were here in 1976.’

‘I remember that summer,’ Mr Quarles said. ‘My wife and I came with the children.’

‘Not in late August. That’s when we were here.’

‘I suppose it’s possible. Bit of a mystery, though.’

‘Not to me,’ Ollie said.

Embarrassed by the impasse, Em began asking Mr Quarles about his family and I got up and left the room. My plan was to snatch a word with Daisy — even a kiss. But as I entered the kitchen, she swept past with the coffee. To return would have looked odd, so I walked out onto the terrace. No sign of Milo. It was too much to hope he had returned to London; maybe he’d gone out for the day.

I felt embarrassed for Ollie. The story of finding the house had seemed fishy from the start and now Mr Quarles had made it look even less plausible. Perhaps the tumour was disrupting Ollie’s normal brain functions or had skewed his memory. The need to devise fantastic stories was disturbing nonetheless.

Rufus trotted past as I stood brooding, and I followed him as far as the orchard fence, through which he squeezed in search of rabbit scents in the field. Shorn of its wheat cover, the scorched earth had split open, like crazy paving or shattered glass. I called Rufus back before the stubble could lacerate his pads. Leaving the orchard, we ambled to the end of the drive. Most of the blackberries in the hedge had shrivelled to ash but those lower down looked more promising — until I touched them and they imploded, black corpse blood staining my palms. I knelt and wiped my fingers in the grass, like a killer removing the evidence. When I looked up again, there was Mr Quarles, tottering towards us on his raised heel. It seemed to take for ever, as if the house had him in its force field and wouldn’t let go.

‘Long walk back to Belgium,’ I joked when he finally arrived.

Rufus doesn’t usually bark at people but I had to shush him.

‘Sorry?’

‘I understand you live in Belgium.’

‘No, I’m in London these days. Though I did …’

Rufus barked again so I missed the rest. It was irrelevant anyway. Clearly Belgium was another of Ollie’s fantasies.

‘Did you sort out the confusion?’ I said.

‘Sorry?’

‘About my friend staying here in 1976.’

‘It’s a puzzle,’ Mr Quarles said, reluctant to make Ollie look any more foolish. ‘But I’m happy to take Mr Moore’s word for it.’

When I reconstruct the events of that weekend, I find it hard to be sure what I was thinking or feeling at particular points. But perhaps you’ll believe me when I say that it was then, on the drive, next to the rotting blackberries, with Mr Quarles, that I understood for the first time what a liar Ollie was. I should have seen it years ago. The man was false as water. He lied as easily as he breathed.

I felt sad but vindicated. If he couldn’t be trusted to tell the truth, I owed him nothing.

‘Well, I’d better not keep you,’ I said.

‘It’s all right,’ Mr Quarles said, ‘I’m waiting for Mr Moore.’

‘Really?’

‘We’re going to church together.’

‘Church?’ I said. ‘Since when did Ollie go to church?’

‘He went last week, apparently.’

‘With Daisy?’

‘On his own.’

‘Christ. Has he had a religious conversion?’

‘He said he found it restful there. He wasn’t planning to go today but then he felt sorry for Mr Quarles.’

I’d gone up to our room to undress for a shower and Em had followed. It felt awkward being alone with her after last night, but the bathroom was occupied — by Milo or one of the girls, I presumed — so for now I had no choice.

‘Why sorry?’

‘Weren’t you there when he told us? It’s an awful story. Mr Quarles lost his whole family in an accident. His wife and two boys. It happened up here somewhere.’

‘Recently?’

‘Twenty or thirty years ago. All the same.’

‘A car crash no doubt. That’s what the locals are famous for — bad driving and incest.’

‘They were drowned. Mr Quarles should have been with them but some problem came up so his wife took the boat out without him. She was an experienced sailor, he said. But a storm got up and they capsized.’

Em sat down and rootled in her handbag.

‘Now do you understand why he might want to go to church?’ she said, peering at her mobile phone. ‘Ollie too, given … you know.’

That would explain it, of course: Ollie seeking solace in his hour of need. The thought made me angry, nonetheless. I didn’t like to think of him as weak.

‘Church isn’t going to cure him,’ I said. ‘Or bring back Mr Quarles’s family.’

‘No, but it might help them cope.’

Typical Em. So calm and understanding. Sometimes her halo infuriates me.

‘If God gave me a terminal illness or killed my family,’ I said, ‘I wouldn’t pray to Him, I’d burn His fucking church down.’

‘What’s wrong with you this morning?’ she said, looking up from her phone. ‘Did you lose your little race?’

‘That’s nothing to do with it. I hate people using faith as a comfort blanket.’

‘Why shouldn’t they? Faith’s empowering. You could do with more of it yourself, Ian.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Faith in yourself, faith in your friends. You’re too suspicious.’

‘There’s a lot to be suspicious of. Trust people and they betray you.’

‘Have I betrayed you?’

‘You’re an exception.’

To my relief, she went back to playing with her mobile. Betrayal was too near the bone.

‘Still no damn signal.’ She held the face of her mobile up. ‘Magda could have been trying to get hold of me.’

My socks were sweaty and hard to roll off. I sat on the edge of the bed to make it easier.

‘Forget Magda,’ I said. ‘Give yourself a break.’

‘If you’d seen the state she was in —’

‘So what? You’re not on duty. You’re supposed to be relaxing.’

‘How can I relax, with all these cobwebs and creaky floorboards and weapons on the wall? It’s spooky here. Don’t you find it spooky?’

‘It’s too hot to be spooky.’

‘Well, it gives me the creeps.’

My socks were finally off. I stood up and dropped my boxer shorts, turning away from Em as I did, in case my nakedness gave me away.

‘ You were late to bed last night,’ she said, more teasing than reproachful.

‘I know,’ I said, wrapping a towel round my waist.

‘What time was it?’

‘Dunno. I lost track. Milo was there. We were talking. Then Archie came in.’

‘And Daisy?’

‘Yes, Daisy was up, too.’ I heard the bolt slide across the hall, just in time. ‘That’s someone coming out of the bathroom.’

‘Are we staying tonight?’ she said, before I could make it out the door.

‘That’s the arrangement.’

‘They’d understand if we left,’ she said. ‘I’ve work to do. Your hearing’s on Wednesday.’ She stood up and put her arms round me. ‘We could beat the traffic and have tomorrow to ourselves.’

‘It would look rude,’ I said, pulling away.

‘No one would miss us. We could drop in on your parents and have tea. I know they’d like it.’

‘On a bank holiday weekend? They’ll be in Blackpool with all the other morons.’

‘When did your parents ever go to Blackpool? You always make out they’re working class, when they’re not. Your dad had that job at —’

‘I don’t want to see them. Anyway, I promised Ollie we’d stay.’

‘Ach, you boys and your stupid bet.’

I opened the door. She let me go. I’d got away with it.

Under the thin, hot spray, I took my punishment. Let me be pricked to death with burning needles. Let me be irradiated. Let me be washed in gulfs of liquid fire.

It was Em who suggested a swim — anything to escape the house. Breakfast had been perfunctory (cereal and fruit) and lunch just sandwiches, the heat killing all appetite. We lolled under the parasol, only Milo’s girls — sealed in factor 80 sunscreen — stirring from the shade. Even Ollie was relaxed for once, as if church had purged his nervous energy. Beyond the orchard, a heat haze trembled over the stubble. It was a day to make you dream of freezer shelves, blizzards, the down draught from helicopters, the spangled fur of huskies.

Archie was asleep or had gone off to his gig. No one seemed to know. We were all far too hot to care.

‘Walk anyone?’ Em said.

Silence.

‘Game of boules?’

Silence.

‘How about a dip?’

‘Now you’re talking.’

It was the prospect of cold that drew us — even the sun at its hottest couldn’t warm the North Sea. Ollie, taking charge, consulted his map to find a beach that ought to be quiet. Milo swept the girls off to get their swimsuits. Em gently berated me in the bedroom, whispering that she’d rather we were driving home. I kissed her on the cheek, like Judas. For me the point of the excursion was to get some time alone with Daisy.

We went in two cars, Milo driving his hosts while Bethany and Natalie came with us. They’d taken a shine to Em, who kept them going with nursery rhymes, riddles, I-spy games and silly jokes. Not knowing the way, I followed Milo, my eyes on Daisy in the back seat. Once or twice she turned and waved but there was no special affection, nothing for me. I was still brooding about her performance at lunch, when Milo said he feared he’d outstayed his welcome and was wondering about heading back. Good idea, I thought. But Daisy would have none of it, seizing his hand and begging Ollie to ‘make sweet Milo and his lovely girls please, please stay another night'. I ought to have been feeling happy — it was me, not Milo, she’d slept with last night — but I needed some flag or token of her love.

The lanes were narrow and deep, and it was half an hour before we saw the sea.

My idea of a beach comes from childhood holidays in Bridlington: donkeys, ice creams, yellow sand, silent yachts out in the bay. I didn’t expect to find a beach like that near Badingley. But nor was I ready for the bleakness. It’s true that I arrived full of bad feeling, angry at Daisy, irritated with Em, jealous of Milo and dismayed by Ollie. But the melancholy of the coastline owed nothing to my mood.

We drew up near a ruined church, the girls leaping out before I’d killed the engine, frustrated, as we all were, by how long it had taken to arrive. The sea lay straight ahead, beyond the church, like a flat grey mirror, but Ollie said the sand cliffs were too steep at that point and led us off diagonally, round the edge of an open field. From there a path bent seaward through gorse and bracken. The girls ran excitedly ahead, Ollie — self-appointed leader — struggling to keep up. Em took my hand and smiled, grateful for the hint of breeze. Daisy and Milo were lagging behind; after his announcement last night, they had business to discuss. I mustn’t be impatient. Our moment would come.

The sea took its colour from the blue above, but a murky brown showed through, like old paint beneath a new coat.

At a stile, we entered a bird sanctuary or nature reserve, I’m not sure which — all I noticed was the sign: EXTREME FIRE DANGER — NO BARBECUES OR CAMPFIRES. The bracken was tinder under our feet, and I could imagine the whole lot going up in flames. Two sticks rubbed together would be enough. Or a metal heel striking flint. Or a dropped cigarette stub. The known world had turned flimsy and combustible.

Up ahead Ollie and the girls drew to a halt. When we reached them, we saw why. The path petered out in air; from the sheared-off sand cliff, it was a twenty-foot drop to the beach below. Ollie and I were for jumping, but the others overruled us, so back we tracked, curving inland again, till freshly trodden bracken showed a path off right and we descended gently to the shore. We took off our trainers and flip-flops, digging our toes into the pebbly sand and hearing the sea’s repeated slap-and-swish.

‘Great,’ we all said, ‘really great,’ but it was not.

Plastic bottles had washed up on the shoreline. Jellyfish drifted in the shallows like polythene bags. But the real killer was the wooden sign: NO SWIMMING: DANGEROUS CURRENTS. Ollie, shame-faced, was apologetic — he’d been here thirty years ago and ought to have remembered the rip tide. I wandered in up to my knees but no further, the current tugging at my feet. Despite my fear, it was tempting to give in, let go, be carried out past the breakers to the immense, cathartic cold. From the shallows, I threw stones for Rufus, careful not to land them too far out.

Offshore, two white buoys held steadfast against the wash. What was their purpose? I wondered. To provide moorings? Or serve as a warning? And if the latter, a warning of what? I could remember, as a boy, being given a little paperback called I-Spy at the Seaside, which included a description of buoys marking the place of wrecks ('always painted green, with the word WRECK in white letters'). They carried a score of 20 if you spied one, as much as for spotting a lighthouse or a seal. The I-Spy books were hard to get hold of by the time I was born but my mother picked them up at jumble sales and I became a collector, frustrated only by my failure to acquire numbers 29 (People in Uniform) and 35 (Everyday Machines). I carried them round with me constantly, eager to acquire fresh points. I-Spy became my nickname at school — I-Spy Ian, watcher and sleuth.

Getting into the spirit, I invented an I-spy game for Natalie and Bethany: three points for spotting a crab, two for a cuttlefish, one for a minnow. For thirty seconds they were interested, then boredom set in.

‘Hold my hands, girls,’ Em said, taking over. Beyond them, Milo and Ollie stood in the shallows, knee-deep in divorce law by the sound of it; if Ollie resented the intrusion — divorce wasn’t his field — he was too polite to show it. Daisy, meanwhile, had wandered off, beachcombing along the shingle.

With the others distracted, I sidled after her. Beyond the horizon lay Denmark and beyond Denmark the Arctic, its icebergs shrinking in the global stew.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said, feigning surprise when I caught her up — she couldn’t have failed to hear me scrunching over the shingle.

A bra strap had fallen from her shoulder and she absent-mindedly pulled it back. Her other hand was full of gleanings.

‘What have you got?’ I said.

‘Amber. Driftwood. Gulls’ feathers. Flotsam and jetsam. What is flotsam and jetsam? You’re the teacher.’

‘Flotsam’s washed-up cargo or wreckage. Jetsam’s stuff the crew throw overboard to lighten the load.’

‘So flotsam’s accidentally lost and jetsam’s deliberately discarded.’

‘Exactly,’ I said.

‘Well, you learn something every day.’

I glanced behind. No one had moved. ‘What else have you learned?’ I said. ‘Dunno,’ she said, not with me. ‘What did you learn last night?’ I said. ‘Last night?’ she said, thinking it a game. ‘Last night I learned … that my husband can be extremely argumentative.’

‘You knew that already,’ I said. ‘You also learned about Milo going to New York.’ ‘I did. Worse luck.’ ‘And later?’ ‘Later?’

‘You know what I mean by later.’ Three waves broke in the silence.

‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ she said, looking nervously towards the others. ‘I was drunk.’ ‘You were wonderful.’ ‘You were rough.’ ‘I wanted you so badly.’ ‘We lost our heads.’ ‘I didn’t lose mine,’ I said. ‘Don’t say that. It makes it worse.’ ‘It’s what I’ve always wanted.’ ‘That doesn’t make it forgivable.’ ‘Don’t go all moral on me.’

She flinched, as though I’d implied she’d been a slut on the sofa. I mumbled and mammered, trying to explain, but she turned away and bent to gather some bladderwrack. ‘It’s like bubble wrap,’ she said, popping a black polyp. ‘I’m being serious,’ I said.

‘And I’m being practical, Ian. We’re with other people. End of story.’

‘It’s not the end, it’s the beginning. We made love.’ ‘That wasn’t love.’

‘It was for me.’

‘We’d been drinking. It wasn’t real.’

‘It’s more real than anything I’ve ever done.’

I reached for her hand but she pulled away, spilling stones and feathers.

‘Don’t,’ she said, kneeling on the shingle to gather them up, ‘the others will see.’

I turned to look. High in the thinning cliffs, martins swooped out of their hatches. Below them — leafless, broken, eerily naked — salt-worn tree trunks lay like corpses in the sand. No one was near. Milo’s girls were coming our way but still fifty yards off.

‘I know you feel bad towards Ollie,’ I said, kneeling to help her.

‘Not just Ollie, Em.’

‘What people don’t know can’t hurt them.’

‘I don’t believe that. Anyway, it’s no excuse.’

‘I’ve stopped wanting Em. There’s no desire any more. You came before her. You still do.’

‘That’s silly, Ian. You two have a life together.’

‘Not after last night.’

‘Stop going on about last night. It didn’t mean anything. Get that in your thick skull, will you?’

As Milo’s girls ran up, she brandished a stone, holding it to the sun. The stone had a hole in it. Lemmel stones we call them in the Pennines.

‘Look,’ she said, performing for them, ‘a stone with no heart.’

I wandered off, down to the tide, letting the surf wash the grit from my toes. Which was worse: to be called thick, or to be told our lovemaking had no meaning? Mr Nobody, that was me — a nothing man who’d had nothing sex with a woman who felt nothing for him. I’d been used then chucked away.

‘You all right?’ Ollie said, catching up.

‘I’m ready to head back,’ I said, wishing we’d never come — not to the coast, not to Badingley, not at all.

‘The quickest route’s along the beach. Daisy’s leading the way, look.’

And so she was, her golden legs striding off, with Milo, Em and the girls close behind.

We headed after them, through the shingle below the sand cliffs. According to Ollie, several feet of land fell in the sea each year. He could remember a house standing on the cliffs when he was last here. Erosion was a natural process.

‘No bollocks about global warming, please.’

‘Certainly not,’ I said. ‘I’ll leave that to Milo.’

Clouds lined the horizon, the first we’d seen in days. Wafts of sage came from the clifftop and ozone from the sea. But the heat felt oppressive, runnels of sweat seeping down my back. Natalie and Bethany had stopped to paddle again. Two stick figures stood beyond them, fuzzy in sea fret — Milo and Daisy it must be. She’d surely not tell him what had happened last night, but I imagined her mocking me, the nerd from Ilkeston, with his clumsy credulity. Or perhaps, since I meant nothing to her, she would tell him, and they’d laugh together at my crassness. Perhaps she’d done it with him, too, and that had meant something. She might have fucked me purely to spite him, after he’d told her he was going to New York. Whatever the truth, they were close now. The mist half obscured them but I could see that they were walking arm in arm.

I stopped to pick up a chunk of driftwood.

‘Has Daisy known Milo long?’ I said, handing it to Ollie.

‘A couple of years maybe. Why?’

‘No reason. I’d have guessed longer.’

‘She’s done a lot for his career.’

‘That figures.’

‘Sorry?’

‘I’m just surprised she invited him up here when you’re on holiday.’

‘You know Daisy,’ he said, tossing the driftwood in the sea, ‘she loves company.’

‘And he loves hers, that’s obvious,’ I said.

‘Is it?’

‘He admires her. I wasn’t implying there’s anything more.’

I picked up a flat stone and weighed it in my hand, then walked to the edge of the tide and skimmed it: o-o-o-o-o it went, before disappearing.

Ollie followed suit, as I knew he would: o-o-o-o-o-o-o his went, beating mine by two skips.

We skimmed stones out into the blue-brown sea, while dark clouds heaped up on the horizon. Ollie’s record was eleven bounces.

‘You don’t mean Milo’s — you know?’ he said, stepping deeper in the current.

‘What?’

‘He seems too involved in his kids to be leching after Daisy. And too married. Doesn’t he? What do you think?’

‘What do I think?’

‘Stop parroting me, Ian. I asked you a question.’

‘Hang on, I’m up to my knees here,’ I said. We waded back through the breakers. ‘You can’t expect me to tell you every thought I have.’

‘It’s a simple question.’

‘I should have kept my mouth shut. There’s no need to be jealous.’

‘What’s jealousy got to do with it?’

‘Nothing. That’s my point. Those clouds are getting darker, you know.’

I said it to distract him but it was true. They were building from the horizon and shaded with diagonal streaks of black. Another of the I-Spy books I’d had as a child was on clouds and I could still remember some of the terms — cirrostratus and castellatus and cumulonimbus. For a time I’d been a collector of clouds: clouds rippled like sand when the tide has gone out; clouds tagging along after a storm, like slow runners late to the finish line; clouds like dust covers in an empty room; clouds like galleons, battleships, barrage balloons, pillowcases, mares’ tails, dandelion clocks, shoals of mackerel; clouds like milk spills, snowdrifts, ink stains, snot streams; clouds the colour of school blackboards; clouds that turn cloudier as they approach, like a glass of anise with water added; clouds stacking up like planes over Heathrow. I pointed out the gathering storm. But Ollie gave it barely a glance. Once set on something, he wasn’t distractable.

‘They have been spending a lot of time together,’ he said.

‘That’s her job. Or was her job. It won’t be much longer.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Didn’t she tell you? I assumed she would have.’

‘Tell me what?’

‘Milo’s moving to New York. His marriage has broken up.’

‘She might have mentioned it,’ he said, though I knew from his look that she hadn’t. Despite all the lies he’d told, I felt a surge of pity for him.

‘He’s a single man again. You can tell. He has that look. The look of a man who’s —’

An Arctic tern swooped low above us, cutting me off.

‘What, on the prowl?’ Ollie said.

‘Lonely, that’s all I meant. Anyway, when he goes to New York, Daisy will soon be over him.’

‘Over him?’

‘I’m not saying there’s anything dodgy going on, just that she finds it hard to be detached.’

‘You think she’s too fond of him?’

‘I expect she has to be fond of him to represent him properly. She’s also fond of his wife — his ex, I mean. Sorry, I don’t know why I brought it up. You’ve nothing to worry about.’

I hadn’t intended to set Ollie on the rack — not till my suspicions had more substance. But sometimes things spill out before you know it.

As we walked on I babbled away, to take his mind off Milo and Daisy. Had he booked tennis for tomorrow morning? Would we be playing just the one set or best of three? The cliffs were lower by now and darkly textured, more clay-and-shale than shingle-and-sand. Out at sea it was raining. A large black cloud stretched down to the waves, like God unclenching His hand to let the water through.

We strode on to where the others were waiting.

‘I haven’t upset you?’ I said, before they could hear.

‘Not a jot, not a jot.’

‘Just forget everything I said, OK.’

‘OK,’ he said, though I knew he wouldn’t forget a word.

As well as the time in London when I didn’t see Daisy, there was another occasion, shortly afterwards, when I did. I’d been sent on a two-day training course near Paddington and the first day was so dull I bunked off for the second. I called Daisy from the B & B shortly after nine. It was a Friday and Archie was at nursery. I’ll come to the house, I said, but Daisy suggested a cafe in Hampstead, a couple of Tube stops away from her home. I arrived early, chose a coffee I’d never heard of, and waited in the window, under the A and F of CAFE, so I could see her coming down the street. I told myself that if she was late — as she proved to be, by twenty-two minutes — it wasn’t indifference but the opposite. The same with her reluctance to see me at the house: what she feared was her desire for me — with no one around to restrain us, anything might happen. I’d never understood what had gone wrong between us. Fruits and slots had helped distract me but I still thought about her constantly. Before I committed to Em, I needed to lay Daisy to rest.

I was perfectly positioned for her arrival but she was almost through the door before I recognised her.

‘You’ve cut your hair,’ I said, more accusing than I meant. She was wearing black trousers, a jacket buttoned up to her neck and hair cut tight against her scalp.

‘Do you like it?’

‘It’s different.’

‘You prefer it long.’

‘I’ll get used to it,’ I said.

I offered her coffee but she said she couldn’t stay long and that a glass of water would be fine. She chattered on, tense, high-pitched, like a dentist’s drill. Ollie was spending more and more time on the provincial trial circuit. They were having a new kitchen put in. Her closest colleague at the recruitment agency was leaving to have a baby. It was Daisy talking, and me listening, and though I wished she’d relax and undo her coat and say ‘bath’ and ‘grass', or ‘love’ and ‘chuck', as she used to do, I was happy just to be with her again. Only the hair distressed me. Dis-tress, I thought, as her words flowed over me. To have one’s tresses cut off. And to be unhappy. Either or both.

She talked on, running the clock down. I didn’t have long.

‘So are you happy?’ I said.

She laughed, taken aback.

‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

‘That’s not an answer.’

‘Don’t I sound happy?’

That wasn’t an answer, either, but I let it pass.

‘I’m amazed you cope, living down south.’

‘I love it in London.’

‘With a small child to look after.’

‘He’s a delight.’

‘And Ollie away such a lot.’

‘I’m glad of it. I’d hate having him under my feet.’

Her tone was jokey. But humour can be a defence.

‘It must get lonely.’

‘I’ve lots of friends,’ she said, looking at her watch. However unhappy, she couldn’t admit it.

‘I just wanted to say,’ I said, knowing I’d not have another chance, ‘that if things are going badly, if you need someone to turn to, if you feel you’ve made a mistake, if … well, I don’t have to tell you.’

‘And I don’t have to tell you,’ she said, reclaiming her catchphrase.

It could have meant many things. But from her lips, I understood at once: It’s you who are my truest companion, Ian, but rightly or wrongly I’m with Ollie, and you mustn’t waste your life waiting for me. It must have cost her a lot to let me go, but that was when she did, in Hampstead, over a sugar bowl, between the letters A and F. The new hairstyle (was it Ollie who had forced her?) made it easier for me. Shorn, she could have been anyone.

I wasn’t surprised by what she said next.

‘And you?’

‘I’m OK.’

‘Are you seeing someone?’

I told her I was, and had been for a while, but omitted to say that we were living together, for fear she wasn’t ready for that. My instincts were right. I’d heard the rumble of jealousy in her question. And when I began to describe Em she cut me off, as if the thought of me being attracted to another woman was too painful.

‘That’s nice for you,’ she said. ‘God, is that the time?’

‘I’ll walk you home.’

‘I’m getting the Tube.’

‘To the station then.’

‘Don’t be daft. Stay and finish your coffee.’

She kissed me on the cheek, her coat buttoned to her neck, her handbag tight under her arm. I watched her go, stiff, short-haired, the antithesis of the Daisy I’d known. She could have had me once, in her prime. She could still have had me that day. But whether through cowardice or martyrdom, she missed the boat.

There’s a games arcade near King’s Cross and I played some slots while waiting for the train. When a drugged-up hooker came in and propositioned me, I ignored her, hoping she’d go away. But she kept bugging me and wrecking the game, even after I’d told her Go fuck yourself, and in the end I had to smack her round the chops. It wasn’t a hard smack, more a slap to bring her to her senses. But my hand caught her off balance, and her heels were so high she teetered and fell. If I’d really smacked her there would have been blood but I saw none as she lay clutching her face. She was probably well known to the police and they would have thanked me. But when her groans turned into screams, I decided it wasn’t worth the risk. I stepped over her and away, down the aisle of flashing machines. No one tried to stop me as I went.

Next day I proposed to Em.

A few months later, the four of us met up for the first time. And soon afterwards, Em and I were married. I’d had it in mind to ask Ollie to be best man but in the event he and Daisy couldn’t come: the wedding clashed with a holiday they’d booked, cancelling which would have cost them thousands.

So they claimed, though I have always suspected that Daisy couldn’t face the ceremony — not just because she was against marriage in general but because she was against my marriage in particular, having expected I’d always be there for her, the trusty sidekick and reserve.

As a guilt offering, they bought us a dining table and four chairs, delivered by furniture van the day before the wedding: it must have cost them as much as cancelling the holiday would have done, so I’m embarrassed to admit we barely use it, preferring to eat on stools in the kitchen or in front of the telly. We’re just not dinner-party sorts — all that blahing about kids and schools, subjects we prefer to avoid. Still, whenever we do use the dining table I think of Daisy, and that day in the cafe, and the sacrifice she made to set me free.

I thought it was over between us. It was over between us. Until Badingley.

We had lived in a glare since Friday. Now clouds were gathering and it was England again, gloom-struck and drab. Daisy and Ollie fussed round the terrace, stacking the chairs, rushing the cushions inside, folding the large white parasol’s wings. Milo told his girls to build an ark for their furry animals, before the heavens swept them away. The sky looked ready to crack. A few stray drops fell fat on the terrace. We were held in limbo, sultry and tense.

I sat in a deckchair with my eyes closed, imagining a shower of black ink, its rods and blobs erasing every trace of light. The end of the world, in an ink storm: it felt peaceful, imagining that.

‘Tea?’ Daisy said.

None of us wanted tea, or squash, or beer, only rain on our tongues.

Was it raining on Archie at his gig? To judge by the sky’s charred diagonals, it was raining on every village around. But it didn’t rain on us.

Em had gone to lie down in the bedroom — she always gets a headache before a storm. My head, too, was tightening, as if sliced horizontally by cheese wire or squeezed by a circle of coil.

Get that in your thick skull, will you?

The girls, bored with playing Noah, demanded a game. Milo suggested Snap, and Daisy fetched some playing cards out to the terrace, since it still refused to rain. Milo asked if I would like to join in. For poker maybe, but I shook my head and wandered inside. No sign of Ollie: he was probably pushing his car into the garage or putting up its soft top.

The air was black, an angry scrawl overwriting the earth.

Upstairs, Em lay dozing under a thin sheet. Beside her lay a book, with a swooning woman in a long red dress against a backdrop of snow-capped mountains. Me, I don’t read fiction any more: I had my fill of it at university. An actual person genuinely climbing a real mountain is more my thing these days, with accompanying facts and statistics. Tales of victory against the odds. Explorers, long-distance cyclists, yachtsmen, fell runners, potholers, adventurers in remote jungles: that’s what I go for, late at night, when I’ve tired of websites. I’m not a driven person but I’m fascinated by men who are. Men like Ollie, that is.

‘How are you, love?’ I said, perching nurse-like on the side of the bed.

‘So-so,’ Em said, pulling me down beside her.

I stroked her forehead and kneaded her neck, careful in my ministrations. Close though I felt to her, the thought of sex alarmed me: both the disloyalty to last night’s passion and the fear of being found out.

‘What time is it?’ she said. ‘Sixish.’

‘We could be home by eleven if we left now.’

‘We’ve been through this.’

‘I was watching you earlier, on the beach. You had a face like a funeral.’

‘I’m fine,’ I said.

‘You looked worried — like something bad was about to happen.’

The bad thing was Daisy, and had happened already. I kissed Em’s cheek in atonement. She kissed me on the lips in return.

‘I’m glad you came up,’ she said. ‘I wanted to tell you. Daisy knows.’

‘Knows what?’

‘We talked. It all came out. She knows about the tumour.’

‘When was this?’ I said.

‘Earlier. On the beach.’

Had she spoken to Daisy on the beach? I thought the figures arm in arm in the mist were Daisy and Milo.

‘Christ. I told you not to tell her.’

‘I didn’t. She knew already.’

I sat down on the bed.

‘Ollie told me she didn’t know,’ I said.

‘Daisy can’t understand that. Are you sure you heard him right?’

I replayed Ollie’s remark on the fairway, the bit about being given his cards. Then the conversation in the pub garden: the crisps, the wasps, ‘My Generation’ pounding — and the terrible prognosis.

‘I swear that’s what he said,’ I said.

‘Anyway, the point is she does know and it’s not as bad as Ollie says.’

‘Of course it’s bad. It’s terminal.’ ‘According to the consultant, the tumour’s low-grade and slow-growing. And there’s a fifty-fifty chance that it’s benign. They’re doing more tests next week.’

‘Ollie told me he was dying. Why would he lie?’

‘He’s in a panic. Anyone would be.’

‘Stop sticking up for him,’ I said. I stared at the window-pane, and the mummified fly in the spider’s web. ‘The lying fucker.’

‘I thought you’d be pleased.’

‘Of course I’m pleased. It’s just … If he’s not dying, why is Daisy marrying him?’

‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ she said, feeling my brow as if I was the sick one.

‘It must be a precaution. In case it is terminal. To keep things simple with the will and so on. And because she feels sorry for him.’

‘You’re being so weird about this,’ Em said. ‘It’s like you want him to die.’

‘Don’t be stupid.’

‘You’re supposed to be his friend. He’s frightened. He needs your support.’

It was true. I ought to be kind to him. But he had lied.

‘I’m all sweaty,’ I said, pulling my T-shirt off.

‘That’s how I like you. Climb into bed.’

‘There’s no lock on the door.’

‘So?’

‘Milo’s kids are running around.’

‘I thought you wanted to make love. What else did you come up for?’

‘To see how you were. And change for dinner.’

‘It’s only a barbecue.’

‘Even so.’

I pulled away. She shrugged, giving up on me.

‘Put that nice green shirt on,’ she said. ‘No, not in the suitcase. The one hanging up.’

In my struggle to open the mirrored door, one of Em’s dresses fell on the shoes in the bottom of the wardrobe.

‘Not yours I take it?’ I said, picking up a shrivelled black brogue.

‘Yes, I saw those,’ Em laughed. ‘They’ll be Mr Quarles’s. His stuff is everywhere. I don’t think he’s touched anything since the accident. No wonder the place feels spooky.’

‘You’re not really spooked, are you?’ I said, putting the shoe back and grabbing my shirt. ‘We could leave, if you are.’

‘I’d feel better if you got in bed and gave me a cuddle.’

Relenting, I slid in beside her. A cuddle was all I intended, but Em had other ideas. Her skin felt hot and the familiar scent had the familiar effect. She was my wife, for God’s sake. Why feel guilty towards Daisy? Especially when the bitch was being so cold.

We were quiet in case the girls came up.

There can’t have been much of me, after last night, but I came.

She smiled as I buttoned my shirt. That’s when I knew she must be ovulating.

‘I’d better go down,’ I said. ‘Ollie will be looking for me.’

‘Be nice to him. Whether he’s dying or not, he isn’t well.’

The act might be over but when your foreskin’s moist with cunt the act will be fresh on your mind. It was certainly on mine as I walked downstairs.

I’ll be honest with you. Sex with Em hasn’t been easy of late. Not for the past couple of years, in fact, since she started trying for children. We’re rarely apart and sex is important to us both. It seems unfair, in the circumstances, that we haven’t produced a child. Unfair on Em, anyway. To me what’s unfair isn’t failing to conceive but the damage to our sex life: the thermometers and ‘impregnation-efficient positions’ and the worry whether we’re doing it too often or not enough. It’s no one’s fault, they tell us at the fertility clinic, but we’ve both suffered from a feeling of inadequacy. For Em it has been harder. She’s a woman. And though the initial diagnosis was ‘non-specific infertility', she naturally blamed herself.

Sometimes the pressure gets to us. A few days before Badingley she laid into me when I returned late after dropping off at the pub (less for a beer than for the slots and fruits).

‘Childlessness suits you just fine, doesn’t it?’ she began. ‘If you were a dad, coming home late every night would be more tricky. You’re afraid of losing your freedom.’

‘Don’t be like this.’

‘I’m being myself. This is me.’

‘We’ve discussed it before.’

‘Yes, but we never get anywhere, do we?’

For an answer I took her upstairs.

‘Would I be doing this if I didn’t want children?’

It worked, after a fashion. But Em still believes I’m holding out on her, as though willing us to remain infertile.

I’d be a liar if I said my performance hasn’t been affected. Men these days are encouraged to be soft — except in bed, where we have to be hard. Be gentle, be tough, kiss me, boss me, respect me, enter me — the mixed messages are sometimes too much. I lose confidence, lose patience, lose desire.

Em blames herself, of course. She worries about putting on weight (not in the way she’d like to put on weight) and fears I’m no longer attracted to her. It makes life difficult for us both. None of it would have arisen but for the issue, or non-issue, of kids.

Ollie was next to the fireplace in the living room, a tumbler of whisky in his hand, inspecting the two crossed swords.

‘I thought they were decorative,’ he said. ‘But feel that blade. They could do some serious damage. Want one?’

He meant a whisky, not a sword, and I nodded.

‘Come through,’ he said. ‘There’s a choice of malts.’

I had not been in the dining room since the first day and had almost forgotten it — easily done, since the door matched the design of the oak panelling in the corridor: once it was shut, you would never know the room was there. As a child, I’d loved adventure stories which featured secret chambers and used to comb our terraced house in search of one; now, decades later, I’d found it. An old drinks cabinet, with a mirrored interior and walnut surround, stood in the corner. Ollie pulled out a dining chair and gestured for me to sit down. The walls were a lurid violet and the brick floor smelled of mushrooms. But the room felt colder than the rest of the house, which was a relief.

‘Thank you for being frank earlier,’ Ollie said, closing the door. ‘I can’t be doing with evasions any more. It’s all too late for that.’

Less of the too late, I thought. It was the moment to call his bluff, to say I knew, that Daisy had told Em, that his claim to be dying was a lie. But could Daisy be trusted? Suppose he was dying and she didn’t want us to know. Or that she’d convinced herself he wasn’t dying in order to feel less guilty about fucking Milo. If she was fucking Milo. The possibilities were endless.

The malt tasted good — a Glenmorangie, twenty years old, tanged with bitterness.

‘You’ve set me thinking,’ he said.

‘Forget what I said.’

‘Milo and Daisy are too fond of each other, you implied. What’s the evidence?’

‘I probably imagined it. Em says I have a dirty mind.’

‘Imagined what? Stop protecting me, Ian. There’s more to this.’

I swirled the whisky in my glass and thought of the malt-brown North Sea, how even the clearest sky can’t turn it blue.

I looked at him and drew breath.

‘I’ll tell you, if it’s bothering you, but I’m sure it’s nothing. Last night, after you’d gone to bed, I took the dog for a walk, and when I came back Daisy was lying on the sofa, looking dishevelled. She seemed rather put out to see me.’

‘Where was Milo?’

‘I don’t know. He probably heard me coming in and went off to bed.’

‘Why would he do that?’

‘They’d been talking. He’d told her about his marriage breaking up and how he planned to move to New York, and she was upset.’

‘Daisy cries easily.’

‘Yes, and she obviously had been crying. I fetched her some water while she straightened her clothes.’

‘Why would her clothes need straightening?’

‘No reason. I’m not suggesting she’d been up to anything.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘Nothing. Daisy loves you, not Milo.’

‘You mean they’re having an affair?’

‘No way. She might have a crush on him but she wouldn’t act on it. Not lightly. I should have kept my mouth shut. My dream life’s disgusting.’

‘What have dreams to do with it?’

‘Well, that’s the other thing. I shouldn’t tell you, it’s embarrassing — but after Daisy had gone off to bed I went through to see Rufus, and I was so tired I ended up falling asleep on the rug beside him, and next thing there were voices, as if Milo had come back down, and then — sorry, this is ridiculous — I heard two people having sex.’

‘Fucking hell.’

‘No, but the point is it was only a dream. When I woke up and went through no one was there. I imagined the whole thing.’

‘Maybe you overheard them in your sleep.’

‘There’d have been evidence. Stains on the sofa or tissues in the waste bin. Trust me. Nothing happened except in my head. I apologise for bringing it up. Can I have another malt, please?’

You will think me a bad person, and sometimes I think so too. But it was true about the dream. So much had happened I’d forgotten it till then. After falling asleep next to Rufus, that’s what I dreamt, the sweet memory of making love to Daisy coursing through me but with Milo in my place. I couldn’t tell Ollie the whole truth. And if the dream hadn’t come back at that moment, I would have refrained from telling him. But nor did I invent it. I’m not a monster.

Having said that, as we sat there in the cold little room I can’t deny a certain satisfaction in seeing Ollie suffer. I’ve not spent my life in jealousy, but it did briefly poison my existence. And since Ollie was to blame for that, it was only right that he know how it felt.

I was avenging myself on Daisy, too. She might have been cold and aloof on the beach but she’d slept with me willingly enough the night before, and her eagerness, her sluttish enthusiasm, made me wonder how many other men she’d had before me. If Ollie now suspected her, that was only just. Suspicion is what she deserved.

‘If it’s true, I don’t blame her,’ he said, his back to me as he stood at the drinks cabinet.

‘How do you mean?’

‘I’ve not been easy to live with. It evens things up.’

I looked at him quizzically as he handed me the malt but he avoided my eyes, as if to say Let’s leave it at that. Was he saying he’d had mistresses? Or that he’d made life difficult for her in other ways? I’d no time to digest it before he spoke again.

‘Did I say when I showed you round?’ he said, gesturing to the four walls. ‘This is the room they brought my father to. Before they took him to the morgue.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Surely I told you about his death.’

‘You told me he died when you were twelve. You never said how.’

‘He drowned. While we were on holiday here. When they recovered the body, they brought him to this room and laid him out.’

He gripped the table edge, as if the solid wood between his fingers and thumb would somehow authenticate the story.

‘God,’ I said, playing along, ‘how awful.’

‘I remember my mother and me standing here. The oilskin they’d wrapped him in smelled of fish. There was a tiny strand of seaweed in his hair that made me think they must have dredged him from the seabed. But they found the body three miles out to sea. As if he’d set off to swim to Denmark and got into trouble. As if he’d been trying to escape us.’

I tried to remember when Ollie had first told me about his father dying. Before he met Daisy or after? Probably after. The word ‘tragedy’ would have made her feel sorry for him, just as his tales of Sandhurst made her think him brave. Hero and victim: no wonder she’d fallen under his spell. But to me he’d spoken only of a sudden death, as if from a heart attack or stroke, not a drowning. Of course, I wanted to believe he was telling the truth. But there was something opportunistic about it. Plagiaristic, too: only that morning Mr Quarles had described losing his family in the North Sea. I’d not been there but Em said it was the saddest story. Now Ollie in his usual way was trying to cap it.

‘That can’t be right,’ I said, disputing the escape theory, not (as I should have) the entire story. ‘You’ve always said he loved you and your mother.’

‘He loved us but he felt trapped. They found a twenty-pound note in the inside pocket of his trunks. Why was that there?’

‘By accident.’

‘Or to start a new life.’

‘You can’t start a new life with twenty pounds.’

‘My father could. I’d let him down, you see.’

‘He was proud of you, you told me.’

‘It was our last day — the bank holiday Monday — and we’d planned an early-morning swim. But when he came into my bedroom, I didn’t feel like it and pretended to be asleep. He stood there saying my name then gave up and went alone.’

‘If you’d gone you might have drowned too.’

‘Rather that than him dying alone.’

‘But if you’d died there would have been no Daisy in your life, or Archie, or a career or …’

Something bright — a sword-flash — lit the room from outside, then came an explosion to waken death.

‘What the fuck?’

I heard the girls screaming outside, then adult laughter and the clip-clop of two doors being closed.

Rain at last.

Thunder was just the start of it. For the next two hours the house was a ship at sea, timbers creaking, deck sloshing, the horizon lost behind spray. Silver pitchforks flashed through the air then tossed us into darkness. You’d have thought a pantiled roof would be secure, but it drummed and rattled like a shanty hut, helpless against the chiding rain. A dozen leaks sprang from the eaves, the worst of them in our bedroom: I stuck a bucket underneath and let the drips slowly change their tune — ping, prang, sprong, shlung, sklish, shoosh — as the water rose towards the brim. Em was out of bed by then, coming down to watch the spectacle with the rest of us. What a picture we made, seven faces lining the windows while the terrace turned to rapids and the field ditch overflowed. I fixed my eyes on a plastic fertiliser bag — its neck open and its body slashed — as gusts bullied it about the orchard. Even the bales out in the meadow looked ready to take off. Under the French windows, sandbagged with towels, a pool seeped across the floor tiles. And still the storm bawled and tantrumed outside, our house the centre of its rage, the nails shrieking in the weatherboarding as the wind wrenched them like a crowbar.

I stood next to Daisy. One kind look would have cured me. But she refused to acknowledge me and disappeared upstairs.

It occurred to me that Milo was responsible for her moodiness — that when they were walking on the beach he’d upset her again and that, rather than be angry with him, she was punishing me. I decided to have a word with him, man to man. He was in the snug down the corridor, where Natalie and Bethany, tired of watching the rain, had unearthed a heap of board games. With no Em to deputise — her head was still bad and she’d gone back to bed — he was playing snakes and ladders with them. Pressed, I agreed to play a round or two. It was difficult to be candid when Natalie and Bethany were present, so for a while I gave myself up to the game and taught them the difference between ‘die’ and ‘dice’ ('you can have any number of dice but you can’t have more than one die'), while my niftiness with the cup-shaker secured me three victories in a row. Bored of losing, the girls went off to find Rufus. It was then I seized my chance.

‘I’m sorry to hear about you and Bianca,’ I said, placing the counters for another game.

‘It’s for the best,’ Milo said, after a pause. ‘If we were going to break up, better now than later.’

‘There’s no one else involved, then?’ An obvious question, I thought, but he seemed taken aback. ‘If that’s not too intrusive a question.’

He picked up the two dice and shook them in the cup.

‘There wasn’t. But Bianca’s started seeing someone in New York.’

‘And you?’

‘I’m in no state. It’s far too soon.’

‘A good-looking bloke like you — you could have your pick.’

‘The girls come first. All my energy goes into looking after them.’

‘You’re making a great job of it,’ I said, though it was Em who’d looked after them all weekend.

‘I do my best. Us breaking up is hard on them.’

‘On Daisy, too,’ I said.

‘Daisy?’

‘She told me about you moving to New York. It’s unsettled her. She’ll miss you.’

‘And I’ll miss her,’ he said. Then, in case I got the wrong idea, which was probably the right idea, he added, ‘I owe her a lot.’

I ran a finger down a snake. Blue eyes, long lashes, boyish cheeks, chest hair sprouting from his open collar: I wanted to slap him down, to crow that I’d had her and he hadn’t. But what if he had?

‘All I’m saying is be nice to her,’ I said.

‘I hope I am being.’

‘Of course. But you know how sensitive she is. She feels rejected.’

‘She shouldn’t.’

‘You can’t be too attentive. She needs all the love she can get.’

The girls returned at that point, and demanded another game. But I’d said enough to get the point across. At the end of the game, which after my three earlier wins I didn’t mind losing, Milo caught my eye and nodded, as if to say Thanks, mate. That’s good advice.

To encourage him to pay court to Daisy went against the grain. But with any luck it might cheer her up.

In the living room, Daisy and Ollie sat in silence by the window, watching the rain. As I hesitated, wondering whether to join them, Em appeared, her headache seemingly cured.

‘Poor Archie,’ she said, taking my arm, ‘out in this.’

‘I’m sure they have tents,’ Daisy said.

I squeezed Em’s arm, as if to say What parenting! If it were our child out in a storm we’d not be so laissez-faire. But Daisy had a lot to take on board. Last night with me had blown her world apart.

‘Drink anyone?’ said Ollie, who had clearly had several.

‘Just a small one,’ I said, reluctant to put a damper on the evening.

No one felt like cooking. We were too tired, too lazy, too enthralled by the weather. And the drink we got through as we watched — even Milo’s girls were treated to sips of wine — only increased our torpor. At 7.27 (a good time in my book) the rain finally stopped. Still no one talked about supper, till Milo’s girls began to whine and he promised them scrambled egg if they changed into their nighties.

‘While Milo’s cooking for the girls,’ Daisy said, ‘I’ll make something for the rest of us.’

‘That’ll be nice,’ Milo said.

I could see Ollie clocking them both and wasn’t surprised when he suggested a takeaway instead.

‘You’ve done enough entertaining for one weekend, darling,’ he said.

An ancient card was pinned to the noticeboard with a phone number for a restaurant called the Indian Pearl, and, unlikely though it seemed, someone answered immediately and took our order. The place was a twenty-minute drive, Ollie said. Since he was way over the limit I volunteered to do the driving. With Em and Milo absorbed in the girls, it was a chance for Ollie and Daisy to talk. Maybe he would confront her with his suspicions and Milo would be asked to leave.

Outside, the rain had eased off, not snare-drumming now but pinging like pebbles in a pan. I slammed the car door and was already turning into the drive when Daisy appeared, flagging me down.

‘Ollie said you’d need a hand,’ she said, climbing in beside me.

There’s something I haven’t told you which I ought to confess, even if it makes you think worse of me. It’s about the debt Em and I were in. I say ‘we’ but we’ve always had separate accounts, so officially I was the one. I didn’t tell her because it would have worried her and I thought I’d have the problem sorted soon enough. I’ve had such crises before. Something always turns up.

There’s nothing wrong with gambling. People in the City are paid to do it and the money’s not even their own. I’ve often envied them that power and freedom. With my head for numbers, I could have made a brilliant hedge fund manager. And I’d not have fucked up like the bankers and brokers in the City have done. Betting’s the basis of our whole economy.

But you have to work to a system. And you can’t take stupid risks when it’s other people’s savings you’re playing with.

At least I’ve no one else’s losses on my conscience. Still, I do feel bad about what happened. Back in January Em and I agreed to start saving for IVF, in case the traditional method for impregnation continued to fail. We gave ourselves a year: by putting aside a regular sum each month, we’d have saved enough for a first (and we hoped last) round of IVF by Christmas. The best way to proceed, I argued, was for Em to pay the household bills while I accumulated capital in my savings account. She had her doubts but in the end I talked her round. There was a principle at stake: I wanted to prove she could trust me. No more websites.

The plan worked like a dream. Free of domestic expenses – the gas, electricity, council tax, water and groceries — I saved over £400 a month. It’s important to have some independence in a marriage and Em’s not the kind of person to go looking at my bank statements (which I keep locked in a filing cabinet, just in case). But if she had looked she’d have seen not the usual fluctuations but steady growth. By the end of June, my account stood at £2,518.23.

Then the trouble broke at school. It’s no excuse but when people are stressed they sometimes relapse. Not that I thought of it as a relapse at the time. The plan made sense. We had exceeded our monthly target, so where was the harm in rounding down the sum in my account and gambling the rest? The sum was modest, a mere £118.23. If I blew it, nothing was lost; if I got lucky, we could use the winnings for a holiday. I felt elated to renew old friendships: Mister Wheel, Mrs Fruit, Master Poker and Miss Slot. And to begin with I was — which you can be, believe me — a prudent gambler. Through skill and guile, I was up £500. But then my winnings went, through unbelievable bad luck, in less than fifteen minutes, late at night. In the old days I’d have had to wait till the banks opened before I could resume. It’s not like that now, thanks to credit cards, debit cards and the Internet. Four hundred pounds, a month’s savings, which I could soon make up, seemed a reasonable extra outlay. I had no intention of gambling the other £2,000. But. What more can I say? You know the rest.

Frankly, I despise myself at times.

If I tell you that by late August my debts stood at £9,700, I am of course including the £3,200 towards IVF treatment that would and should have been in my savings account by then: on paper, my various overdrafts and IOUs amounted to only £6,500. That still sounds a lot to you, I dare say. It does to me, too. But there are always people out there who’ll lend you money, at a price. I’d been thinking of resorting to them but thanks to Ollie’s impulsive bet I now didn’t need to: £10,000 was in my grasp. The neatness of it — down to the £300 surplus I could gamble with — seemed preordained.

Perhaps then you can understand why, despite the shame and guilt swirling through me that Sunday evening, I also felt optimistic. 1—1, with tennis to come, and Ollie the better player, didn’t look promising. But since we’d first agreed to the bet, several things had changed. First, if Ollie was dying he wouldn’t need my money. Second, even if his tumour was benign, Daisy might decide to leave him and if she did, and we were living together, she would settle the debt for me. Third, more immediately, Ollie was drinking heavily: at this rate, he’d be in no condition to compete.

I had those three reasons to feel hopeful, plus one more. If Ollie won, he would be too much of a gentleman to insist I pay him; and if he lost, he would be too much of a gentleman to wriggle out of paying me. Till the weekend, I’d feared losing everything — my house, car, computer, job and wife. Now I stood to secure them again. With luck I might even upgrade them.

I left the Indian Pearl with two large brown bags, goo soaking through the bottom. Though the roads were still wet, the sky had cleared to the west, and behind, in the wing mirror, the dusk turned from salmon to tangerine. Daisy was sleeping, or pretending to, as she had on the way, her hunched body turned towards the nearside window. I knew she had come reluctantly, at Ollie’s insistence, because — stupidly jealous as he now was — he didn’t want her being around Milo in the kitchen; since she’d got in the car, we’d barely spoken. I felt cheerful, nonetheless, as if restored to her favour. Whether as a friend, lover or future husband didn’t matter so long as I was somewhere in her life.

The rain began again as we left the main road, sloshing across then pounding at the windscreen — like the rinse cycle of a washing machine. I turned my headlights on and upped the tempo of the wipers, to no effect. The road became a river, the banks either side our only guide. I could imagine the engine dying and a tide rising high between the hedges, the car surfing over them on the crest of a bore and riding out through the meadows to the sea. Love for Daisy flooded through me. I felt elated rather than scared.

She sat up. The Indian meal had steamed up the windows and she rubbed her sleeve to make a porthole.

‘Ollie told me about his tumour,’ I said, sensing cancer was a safer topic than love.

It was a while before she responded. ‘The consultant thinks it’s benign.’

‘Why did Ollie tell me he was dying, then?’

‘You know what he’s like. Without a certain level of hysteria, he can’t function. Tension energises him and panic keeps him sane.’

‘Telling people you’re dying when you’re healthy isn’t sane.’

‘He believes it. He really does. I could sit him down with his X-rays and scans tonight and show him the prognosis is good, but tomorrow he would still be convinced he’s dying. It’s how he is. A hypochondriac and a stoic rolled into one.’

I kept my eyes on the road but sensed her looking at me. The coldness was melting.

‘He also told me you didn’t know,’ I said.

‘Of course I know. It was me who made him see a doctor in the first place, because he was getting headaches.’

‘So why did he say that?’

‘I’ve no idea. Are you sure that’s what he said?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Maybe he thought it was the best way to stop the subject coming up — he hates talking about it.’

I slowed the car. Though I feared upsetting Daisy, I couldn’t hide my dismay with Ollie.

‘First he tells me he’s dying when he’s not,’ I said. ‘Then he tells me you don’t know when you do. I think he enjoys telling lies. That story of staying at the farmhouse in 1976 is obviously bollocks too.’

‘They did stay, I’m sure of it. Ollie has photos somewhere.’

‘And the MGB being his dad’s. And how he was head boy at school. And how he went to Sandhurst but then packed it in after a year.’

‘That’s right — he had some sort of breakdown. Of course it’s true. It’s all true. How can you even ask?’

‘And his father drowning. He told me that this evening. I’d never heard the story before.’

‘Don’t be daft. He told you at university. Don’t you remember the three of us discussing it? He certainly told me.’

Her gaze briefly fixed on me then swung away, like a lighthouse beam. Despite her anger, we were getting on again. Why couldn’t she see we were meant to be together?

‘You’ve such a weird take on Ollie,’ she said, still protective despite no longer loving him. ‘When you talk about him, it’s as if he’s someone else. Can’t you see he’s going through a bad patch? It’s why he asked you for the weekend.’

‘So it was his idea, not yours?’

‘Don’t be so touchy, Ian. I hoped it would take his mind off things. I remember how it was at university. The two of you were inseparable.’

‘It was you he wanted to be with, not me.’

‘We were a trio.’

‘You were a couple. I was the hanger-on.’

‘I’m the one who used to feel left out,’ she said, leaning forward to clear the windscreen again. ‘I still do sometimes. Em, too, I expect. We sit on the sidelines while you two go off.’

‘Em enjoys your company.’

‘Em makes me feel trivial. When I listen to her talking about her work, mine seems so pointless.’

‘She respects what you do. We both do. Seriously.’

Seriously not. But I felt sorry for Daisy — something I’d rarely done before.

Over the last mile, the rain eased off and the river road dwindled to a stream. As we puttered like a barge along the drive towards the farmhouse, Daisy said: ‘I’m sorry for what I said on the beach. Last night should never have happened. But I know you must have been drunk. We both were. And I do still want us to be friends.’

If she had apologised earlier, I wouldn’t have suspected her and Milo. Nor would Ollie have got the wrong idea about them.

‘Daisy,’ I said, parking the car and cutting the engine.

‘What?’ she said.

‘There’s something …’

I reached for her hand but she was too quick for me. She’d already opened the door and was stretching for the paper bags on the back seat.

‘What?’ she repeated, impatiently, when all I wanted was to warn her of Ollie’s suspicions.

‘Never mind,’ I said.

Daisy was right about Ollie’s hypochondria. It seemed an odd affliction, in someone so physically strong. And for a time at university I failed to see it, because he worked so hard to appear tough. For instance, one Saturday during the second year he was badly trampled in a rugby maul and came home with a black eye, swollen lips and bruised cheekbones. Not once did he complain. When he groaned through the bedroom wall that night, his injuries weren’t the cause, but Daisy.

Minor ailments could send him into a panic, though. Was that mole on his body cancerous? Could the temperature he was running be due to Lassa fever, rather than flu? And he didn’t just worry on his own behalf. One night we were eating together at the house — a rare evening without Daisy. He had cooked us both steaks. They were meant to be fillet steaks but mine was tough — no doubt the butcher, taking Ollie for a clueless toff, had palmed him off with a cheaper cut. A lump of meat stuck in my gullet. This wasn’t the first time such a thing had happened and I knew the only remedy was to wait: the gathering saliva made breathing a struggle but there was no danger of me choking to death. It was Ollie who panicked. He thought the meat must be obstructing my windpipe and dialled 999. A manic phone call ensued, with him demanding that an ambulance be sent and me protesting it was unnecessary. When the operator hung up, thoroughly confused, Ollie dragged me outside, intent on driving me to hospital himself. By then his hysteria had begun to affect me: I was panicking and gasping for breath. But as the night air hit us on the doorstep, the steak-lump suddenly loosened and slipped down.

He’d been a good friend that night. But perhaps at some level he was also willing me to die, so as to re-enact the defining trauma of his childhood: as I struggled for breath, my mouth filling with salty fluid, I must have reminded him of his father drowning. That’s if the story of the drowning was true, of course. As I sat in the car outside the farmhouse, with Daisy’s words still ringing in my head ('Of course it’s true. It’s all true'), I tried to persuade myself it must be.

Ollie was my oldest friend, the brother I’d never had: why doubt him? But my faith was weak. He had lied to me too many times. If I trusted him, I’d be at risk. He might even destroy me.

‘Dessert wine?’ said Ollie, who had meanwhile opened another red.

‘Not for me,’ Milo said.

Rather than eat in the poky dining room, we’d dragged the metal table in from the terrace, and were sitting by the living-room windows watching the rain. The ruins of the Indian takeaway lay before us — spilled rice grains, torn-off ears of nan, silver trays with saffron-orange sauce. Em sat opposite me, with Daisy facing Milo, and Ollie at the head of the table. Natalie and Bethany were sound asleep and, washout though it must have been, Archie was still at his gig. All was peaceful.

Except Ollie, who, having dozed during the meal, had now sprung to life again, full of mischief.

‘Don’t be feeble,’ he said, filling Milo’s glass.

‘Whoa. I’m not much of a drinker. It goes to my head.’

‘That’s why you need it. It’ll inspire you. You’re an artist.’

‘I trained as an artist. Now I barely get time for my own stuff.’

‘That’s not true,’ Daisy said, turning to Em. ‘You should see his work. It’s wonderful.’

I avoided Em’s eye, knowing she hates gushiness as much as I do. We don’t hold with enthusiasm in Ilkeston.

‘I’m sure Milo’s a genius,’ Ollie said. ‘But drink will raise him to even greater heights.’

‘Shut up, Ollie,’ Daisy said. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. When have you ever taken an interest in art?’

‘I go to openings with you. I see the portfolios you bring home. If Milo’s art is something I’d enjoy, here’s to him.’

Ollie smiled and clinked glasses with everyone.

‘I’m not sure you would enjoy it, if you like figurative stuff,’ Milo said. ‘To me figurative art is about duplicating, and I don’t see the point. The world exists already — why copy it?’

‘But that’s what people want, isn’t it?’ Ollie said. I nodded in agreement. ‘For artists to portray things they can recognise.’

‘To me that’s no better than ventriloquism. Here’s a voice we know. Here’s a landscape we know. And here’s a copy. What a dull mechanical exercise! Art should be something more.’

‘OK,’ Ollie said, ‘you’re not figurative. But I assume you could be, if you chose. I mean, if we asked you to do a sketch of the five of us sitting round this table, you could knock one off.’

‘I don’t know about knock off …’

‘Call it what you like, if we gave you a pencil and paper you could draw us, right? And any sketch you came up with would be markedly better than anything the rest of us could come up with?’

‘It’s not the way I work.’

‘Come on,’ Ollie said. ‘You’re a professional artist and designer. Don’t tell me anything I did might be equally good. There must be a sketch pad round here somewhere. Let’s have a competition. We’ll take a sheet each and a pencil and all get cracking, then fold the finished sketches up and pass them round and see if we can guess which one is yours.’

‘Shut up, Ollie,’ Daisy said, ‘you’re being a pain.’

‘It’s a bit of fun. So Milo can prove a point.’

‘He doesn’t need to,’ Daisy said. ‘He’s saying that representational accuracy isn’t the way to judge art. I agree.’

Were they playing footsie? Was his hand on her knee? I knew that Ollie must have his suspicions.

‘Unless Milo can do the figurative stuff,’ he said, ‘why should we trust the rest?’

‘It’s not a matter of trust.’

‘But how can I judge it when I don’t know what I’m looking at?’

‘Take no notice, Milo. When Ollie’s had a drink or two he likes to argue. It’s his training as a barrister.’

‘Exactly my point, sweetie. Because I trained as a lawyer, I’ve the knowledge and skills to practise as a professional. That’s what people pay me for, because they know what they’re getting. Whereas —’

‘Whereas people pay me because they don’t know what they’re getting,’ Milo said. ‘I’d be a failure otherwise. It’s like Matisse — when his Russian patron commissioned him to do a painting of a blue room, he did it in red.’

‘So much for the patron.’

‘The patron was delighted. Even if he hadn’t been, the painting was a triumph. It’s not the job of an artist to make people feel comfortable. They’re comfortable enough already.’

‘Do you think the people I represent are comfortable?’ Ollie said. ‘The man falsely accused of murder? Or the girl raped by some thug?’

‘Of course not,’ Milo said, suddenly sheepish. ‘Your work must be very distressing at times.’

‘Don’t apologise,’ Daisy said. ‘Ollie loves playing the gladiator.’

‘It’s not about play,’ Ollie said.

‘Art is, though. I think that’s the nature of our disagreement,’ Milo said, smiling and leaning back in his chair. ‘You’re demanding the same earnestness from my work that you bring to yours. There’s your error — art should be fun.’

Ollie, sipping his wine, seemed chastened, vanquished, stuck for words. But as Daisy stood up to ask who wanted coffee and who herb tea, he said: ‘It certainly seems to give you and Daisy a lot of fun.’

‘Sorry?’ Milo said.

‘I barely see Daisy these days. And when I do it’s Milo this and Milo that all day long.’

‘You’re being ridiculous,’ Daisy said, embarrassed at being caught out or at Ollie making a spectacle of himself. ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’

‘I’ll clear these,’ Em said.

‘I need a pee,’ Milo said.

I put my hand over the glass as Ollie tried to pour me dessert wine but consented to the red. He filled his own glass at the same time, then half emptied it in one swig. Marooned at the head of the table, he looked lost, as if — with only me there — the purpose of the evening had slipped away. Female murmurs came from the kitchen where Daisy would be complaining that Ollie was impossible and Em consoling her that all men were as bad.

‘Take it easy, Ollie,’ I said, as he swigged again. ‘That wasn’t funny. It’s too near the bone.’

‘Ah. So you admit something is going on.’

‘His wife has just left him. He’s feeling vulnerable. It’s no time for jokes.’

‘It wasn’t a joke. I know now. I’ve seen.’

‘Seen what?’

‘The tissues. With dried sperm on them. In the waste bin.’

‘No, Ollie,’ I said.

‘Just like your dream.’

‘No, you mustn’t think —’

But before I could disabuse him Milo was back.

‘That was quick,’ Ollie said. ‘Prostate in good order, then.’

He seemed set to renew his attack. Perhaps literally: the knives we’d been using were steak knives, sharp enough to penetrate a heart. I’d never known Ollie be violent. But nor had I seen him so pissed and self-deluding. The prostate reference showed how he was thinking: he’d be onto Milo’s penis next and where he might have inserted it. I readied myself for mayhem. But for once my good counsel prevailed.

‘More red?’ was all he said, backing off.

Relaxing, relieved, as if he’d imagined the earlier insinuation, Milo smiled and shook his head.

‘I should get to bed. The girls wake up early.’

‘Don’t be a wimp. Just the one.’

‘Who’s being a wimp?’ Daisy said, carrying in the tray: herb teas for her and Milo, coffee for Ollie and me, nothing for Em.

‘Milo’s talking about going to bed.’

‘I don’t blame him. It’s been a long day.’

‘But we’ve not had our sketching competition. So he can show us up.’

‘For fuck’s sake, Ollie, leave it alone.’

‘Well, OK then, darling,’ Ollie said, pronouncing his words with a pedantic accuracy that betrayed him more than if he’d slurred them, ‘let’s play Scrabble instead. Or Monopoly. Or have a debate about something. Politics. Religion. They always get people going. You choose, Daisy. No? Milo then? Em? Ian? OK, good idea. Let’s talk about sex. More specifically, the problem of sustaining a sex life when you’ve been with someone for ten years or more. Isn’t that why marriages break up?’

‘Ollie, for Christ’s sake.’

‘I’m not being personal, sweetie, just making a general point. It’s obvious: the need for sex brings people together, but once they’re together the need wears off. There’s something faintly indecent about it, like having sex with the family pet. And it’s so routine it scarcely registers. Ian and Em, let’s take you. We’re all friends here, you can be honest. When was the last time? Last week? Last month? Last year? I bet you can’t remember. That’s fine. I can’t remember the last time, either. Sex isn’t for people over forty. It’s for kids, or for having kids, not for us lot.’

I looked at my reflection, upside down in a dessert spoon, with candles flickering over my head. I didn’t dare look at Em, who if she wasn’t yet tearful soon would be. Even her hands, on the table, seemed reproachful: We should have told them about our problem. If we had, Ollie wouldn’t have said what he just did.

‘Shut up, Ollie,’ Daisy said, ‘you’re embarrassing everyone.’

‘Only you, my love,’ he said, back on track. ‘I’m trying to explain why even the best of people can stray. Because they’re trying to recapture a lost excitement. Hence love affairs, and fuck-buddies, and dogging, and all the rest. I don’t sit in judgement. What I’m saying — this is important — what I’m saying is that I understand.’

Daisy passed me the coffee pot as if he wasn’t there. I didn’t blame her. Alcohol had mugged him and scarpered with his brains.

‘Milo? Daisy? Anything to contribute? No? Let me make my other point then. When two people have been together a long time, they might not make love as often as they used to. But that doesn’t mean they don’t love each other. Take Daisy and me. We’re solid as rock. She might have her head turned now and then. But she won’t ever leave me. Tell them, sweets.’

‘Tell them what?’ Daisy said. ‘That you’re drunk? They can see that for themselves.’

‘Me, drunk? This is my right hand and this is my left hand, I can stand well enough and speak well enough — what’s drunk about that?’

Defiant, he poured himself another.

‘I think I ought to go,’ Milo said.

All he meant was go to bed, but Daisy heard it differently.

‘You’re not going anywhere,’ Daisy said. ‘Ollie doesn’t know what he’s saying. In the morning, when I remind him, he’ll apologise to us all, and if he doesn’t then I’ll go.’

‘Tell you what,’ Ollie said, not so out of it as to miss the chance of a barristerial flourish, ‘since no one seems to appreciate my presence, let me be the one to go. Night-night.’

Smiling and nodding, he grabbed the edge of the table with both hands, a manoeuvre that pivoted him into a standing position but also jerked the table. Several glasses tipped over. The wobble sent him lurching backwards but he steadied himself on the wall behind and, with great deliberation, like someone avoiding stepping on cracks, made his way across the room and down the corridor.

‘I’m sorry,’ Daisy said, once he was out of earshot. ‘He gets like this sometimes. He won’t remember any of it in the morning. It’s nothing personal, Milo.’

Milo, nervously sipping his herb tea, looked unconvinced.

‘When he’s drunk, he misjudges his tone,’ Daisy said. ‘I should have stopped him earlier.’

‘He wasn’t implying …’ Milo said.

‘Of course not. He’ll be mortified when I tell him tomorrow.’

‘I’ll get to bed, then.’

Milo wandered off in a daze, his bare feet printing the damp tiles. If he knew what was good for him, he’d clear off before Ollie woke. Good riddance: his presence had all but ruined the weekend. Not that the fault for tonight’s debacle was entirely his. In being attentive to Daisy, he had simply been polite — as everyone except Ollie could see.

Once he was gone, Em burst into tears.

‘Don’t tell me Ollie’s upset you too,’ Daisy said, reaching for her hand. ‘What is it?’

While Em sobbed, unable to speak, I too reached for her hand, my fingers closing on Daisy’s as I did, the three of us locked together at the table, the two women in my life and me.

‘Tell me, love,’ Daisy said, drawing her hand away though I could sense she longed to keep it there.

Between us Em was a heaving mess.

‘Let’s get you to bed,’ I said.

‘What upset you?’ Daisy said.

‘I’ll take her upstairs.’

‘What was it Ollie said?’

‘She’s in no fit state.’

‘I know you want to tell me, love.’

‘Bed’s the best place.’

‘Fuck it, Ian, leave her where she is.’

So I left her where she was and she told. The works. With me there to hear. I suppose I could have left them to it.

I wasn’t made to stay. And Em was protective of me, up to a point, describing the problem as ‘our problem'. But in other respects she didn’t spare me at all, complaining that I had been slow to seek help and slower still to see that IVF was the only option. Her description of our sex life as ‘normal and healthy’ was especially unfortunate: it must have suggested to Daisy that I still wanted Em, when I’d told her I didn’t.

Since half the conversation was conducted in whispers, with Em in Daisy’s arms on the sofa and me banished to a wicker chair, I wasn’t close enough to hear every word nor sober enough to retain them all. I confess that’s true of the evening generally: because my hearing’s bad, and I was drinking heavily, I may have occasionally got things wrong. For instance, I could have sworn that it was Ollie who chose sex as a topic for debate, yet Em later complained that it was me. If so, I wasn’t thinking straight, failing to see where it might lead. But it’s just not true that I ‘egged Ollie on’ or that I kept topping up his glass in order to ‘make trouble'. Sometimes Em completely misses the point.

I must have nodded off as I sat there because next thing Daisy was the one wailing.

‘Where’s Archie? He ought to be back. What time is it?’

‘It’s 12.13,’ I said, trying to hide how ominous that was, twelve and thirteen being two of my least favourite numbers.

‘If he’s out there in the rain, he’ll be catching his death.’ Daisy scanned her mobile for a message. ‘No reception again. What if he’s been trying to call? We should never have let him go.’

I offered to take Daisy in the car and look for him. But Em said I had drunk too much and that she would. They left me to clear up — to dump the silver curry trays in the bin, wash the plates and cutlery, gather up the bottles and wipe the rice grains and curry blots from the table. It was past two before they got back, without Archie, and rather than come through to the living room, where I sat waiting in the dark, they went straight upstairs. Not ready to follow, I bullied Rufus outside for a tour of the orchard. The air was black and soupy, fine rain swaying in it. Cries of pain — prey and predator — echoed from the fields. Finally, around three, I headed upstairs, climbing in beside Em’s moist body and wishing Daisy was there too or instead.