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  But soon he came to recognise that, although Jill had been close as they all wrestled with tables and chairs, she was not close enough to touch him. It was Amy, Jeremy Postern’s strapping young wife, who had been nearest on his left. By now, the hand was withdrawn and they all prepared to sit down. There had been no apology or joke from her about the contact, which seemed to confirm – to confirm needlessly – that it had not been unintentional. But Amy seemed to make no attempt to be seated next to him during the meal, and, when he talked to her and looked at her as the evening went on, he could find no personal message, no easily readable equivalent in her blue-black eyes of knuckles calculatedly nudging his nuts. By then, anyway, Jill had begun to sparkle in her unique way, beguiling everyone, and particularly Brian. It still saddened him that this little slice of pressure had not come from her, but an agreement was an agreement, and he could take his customary solid pleasure in her social being. It was not ferocious pleasure, yet valid, surely.

  A couple of days later, he began to feel that only foolish, smug optimism had made him imagine Jill wished to return. In fact, he had been guilty of trivialising the agreement they had so conscientiously worked out together. Now, he re-ran in his head the details of the agreement, and decided he did not give it due seriousness. Jill might be correct to resent his patronising attitude, particularly, for instance, Brian’s pious, dismissive treatment of the major clause offering him equivalent sexual liberty.

  Early one evening, when he was having an after-work drink with Jeremy Postern and other business friends in The Old Barn cocktail bar, he left them briefly, went to one of the hotel’s public booths and telephoned Amy. She seemed warm, pleased to hear him, unsurprised. He wondered if they might meet one evening, and she thought they might. They arranged a time. Brian went back to the group in the bar feeling not excited or victorious but, yes, more wholesome – that was the state – more wholesome than for a long while.

  Amy and he seemed to need no preliminaries. It was as if they had been waiting for each other. She went halves with him on a bottle of Dubonnet and the charge for a room overnight in a small, cheap hotel, though they would be using it only for a few hours in the early evening. After they had made fierce love – yes, he had to concede, even ferocious love – and were lying relaxed on the bed, he felt he should reassure Amy about the care he would always take with her reputation. He explained that he had telephoned her only when certain Jeremy could not be at home.

  ‘Oh, the bleak sod wouldn’t care,’ Amy replied. She sounded appallingly defeated and miserable. ‘We go our own ways.’

  ‘You don’t like that?’

  Hurriedly, she turned towards him: ‘Darling, of course I do. I couldn’t be here with you now, otherwise, could I?’

  ‘You’re just being polite?’

  She did not answer. In a while, though, she said: ‘Isn’t it the same with you and Jill?’

  ‘Good God, no. I could not tolerate the idea of her seeing, screwing somebody else.’

  ‘Ah, I love jealousy in a man,’ she cried, moving her hand on to his thigh again, though this time the front of her hand and higher still, then higher. ‘It means he cares. It’s because you can throb with jealousy, Brian, that you’re so damn irresistible and sexy. You’re not the kind who would doze through a marriage. God, but Jill’s so lucky.’

  This opening meeting with Amy changed him, gave him vision. Jesus, did Jill think he did not care, because he showed no rage and accepted the agreement? Was this why she would never return fully to him? But he did care. He must show it. He was not like Jeremy – and like so many husbands Brian knew: husbands who by sexual indifference forced a loveless wife to seek fulfilment elsewhere. The next time Jill said she would be out for the afternoon, he decided he would follow her. He still loathed the idea of spying, but now he had come to loathe even more the idea of being passive: of ‘dozing through their marriage’ and, so, pushing her towards another man. He would blow this disgusting, bloodless agreement to smithereens. But agreements were just words and sentiments. He wanted something solid to smash, and he needed a good look at the opposition. It had been an understood part of the agreement that he asked nothing about the man Jill saw. Now, though, Brian had to identify him.

  To tail her would involve taking time off from the business, and he could certainly not afford to do that very often. Although the firm was successful, it was very much a one-man operation, and he would not neglect it simply to dog his wife and her boyfriend week after week. But possibly things would not take that long.

  On both occasions that he watched them they began by going to a grubby little restaurant for lunch. He could have predicted it. This would be another reason for her not dressing up. Wearing one of her authentic ensembles, she would have looked outlandish in this place. Generous to call it a restaurant. This was a café in a drab street, with ‘Heavy Breakfast – £1.50’ scrawled in thin, white lettering on the window. He saw people who looked like clerks or shop assistants going in at lunchtime, and some men in dungarees. Never would Brian have taken a woman there, and certainly not a woman like Jill, even in run-of-the-mill clothes.

  At first, he thought lover-boy must be short of money. In a while, though, Brian saw the cleverness. The pair were unlikely to meet anyone they knew in such poor surroundings, and especially not Jill. Secrecy was more important than cuisine.

  Following her was tricky, of course. Jill would soon notice his car behind her, so he hired different vehicles each time: once an Escort, next a Cavalier. Their drill seemed to be to meet in a waste ground, municipal car park, then walk to the café. First, though, he went to her VW for a few minutes and they kissed and talked, all excited smiles, one arm around the other’s shoulders, as if they had fought their way back together across ice floes, mountains and volcanoes after God knew how many years of forced separation. Probably, they were here every week.

  Each time he tailed her, Brian waited in the hired car not far from their house until she left at about 1 pm. On the first outing, it was really difficult, because he did not know where she was going, and he had to keep close enough to stick, yet avoid being recognised in her mirror. When she entered the car park, he quickly selected a spot for himself far from the one she made for. He had to take his eyes off her then, as he parked. When he looked again it was just in time to see the back view of a middle-height man as he left from a Toyota close to her car, walked the few steps, opened her passenger door and climbed in. To Brian, this appeared a routine: it was that kind of confident stepping out and decisive opening of the door. This bastard could count on a welcome. He had had a lot of welcomes already.

  Brian was a distance from them, had to be, but he saw the heads go together for a prolonged thank-God-we-made-it kiss, and then could observe happy grins and laughter, hers. The back of the man’s head was still towards Brian, mostly grey, but cut short and bristly in a young thruster style. This was how Brian had to think of him on that first occasion – as the man, or lover-boy. Boy? Christ, he had to be at least ten years older than Brian. This was plain at first glimpse, and it hurt. She could prefer someone that age? Only subsequently did Brian discover his name was Lowther, and, quite fortunately, where he lived.

  On the second expedition, it was easier. When she set out from home, he did not know as a certainty she would make for the same place, but it soon became apparent that this was her route again. As they approached the car park, he saw the Toyota waiting, this time with a space available right alongside. She made for that. Once more Brian found a place far off. As the man moved to her car today, Brian was able to get a good, thirty-second view of him face-on; a round cheerful-looking face, with heavy eyebrows. The shifty glow of Indian summer was about him. He could easily have had the eyebrows trimmed, but must feel they were a key part of his image, giving him definition and weight. His face was full now of. … full now of what Brian would have liked to dismiss as raw, lucky-old-me triumph. After all, this was someone in his fifties at least, all set for a long