had expected him to come with Dodo. It was a surprise to learn they had decided to divorce.
‘It wasn’t working out,’ he had told her just before they set out from Penny’s flat. ‘My work keeps me in London and hers is all over the place and she likes to date other men. And I wanted children, she didn’t.’
‘I’m sorry.’ What else could she say? Tempted as she was to tell him he was already a father, she couldn’t, knowing the consequences would be catastrophic. But the secret was like a lead weight in her breast.
‘It can’t be helped and it has its compensations.’ He smiled as he spoke. ‘I might otherwise have missed a new sighting of a very rare bird indeed.’
She had laughed, genuinely laughed, for the first time in a week. ‘Simon, you can be so silly, sometimes.’
‘I know, but why not? If we can’t laugh at our problems, what is the point of it all? Now come on, we’re going to enjoy ourselves tonight.’
The film was a spooky one, but it suited Barbara’s mood, which was black as night. Not that Simon intended it to stay that way. At the party afterwards he was attentive and smiling and apparently oblivious of the glitz all around him, with eyes only for Barbara. She drank too much, laughed too loudly and danced a lot. But exhaustion claimed her in the end and she sank onto a sofa in Penny’s overheated lounge, leant back and shut her eyes.
‘You’re done for, aren’t you?’ His voice in her ear was gently concerned and it wasn’t tonight’s tiredness he meant. He had always been able to read her moods and he knew, without being told, that she was at the end of her tether.
‘Mmm. I think I might be drunk.’
‘It won’t do you any harm. It’s hot in here. Let’s go out on the balcony and gaze at the moon.’
The balcony was tiny and it looked out over the street, with its regularly spaced lamps shedding pools of yellow light onto a row of parked cars; all Penny’s friends drove cars. Above the rooftops the sky was clear and studded with stars. He put his arm about her waist and she leant her head on his shoulder and they stood side by side, silent and unmoving. A car door slammed; someone or something knocked over a dustbin and behind them the sound of conversation and laughter came to them over the music of a gramophone. None of it impinged: they were cocooned in their own little world of quiet contemplation.
‘We are a couple of idiots, aren’t we?’ he murmured.
‘Are we?’
‘Yes. We’ve let ourselves be led by the nose, both of us. I had no right to lecture you about losing the real you, I did it too.’
‘What are you going to do about it?’
‘I don’t know. It depends. But we don’t need to worry about that tonight, do we? Tonight is for us.’
She turned her head to look up at him, wondering if he meant what she thought he did. He smiled and kissed the end of her nose. ‘More therapy?’ she murmured.
‘Only if that’s what you want.’ She wasn’t happy. He could sense it, just as he could sense everything about her, every nuance of emotion, every quirk of her character. He wanted to tell her that he could make her happy, that he loved her, that they belonged together, but he held back, afraid of her reaction, of spoiling the little they had.
‘Oh, Simon, I don’t know what I want. I only know that it’s so comforting standing here with you. And I do need comfort just now.’
He turned her in his arms and gently kissed her on the mouth. There was no pressure, no urgency; he was simply asking the question, waiting for her to give him an answer. She reached up and took his head in her hands and kissed him back. He took her hand and led her back indoors, past the noisy drawing room, to her bedroom.
‘What’s that?’ Simon was sitting up in bed smoking a cigarette, waiting for Barbara to wake up. Seeing her again, being with her, making love to her, had been balm to his injured soul. She was wonderful in bed, caring and receptive, tender and passionate, in tune with everything he did. It was like coming into safe water after a storm. He’d wanted to tell her so, to explain about Dodo, but it would have spoilt their time together and