or Mildmay by turning a blind eye?" he asks. "Or even collude in the hopes of obtaining an easy divorce?"
Helen's mouth twists.
Fido finds all this sickening. "What's the fifth C?" she snaps, to get it over with.
"Cruelty," says the solicitor.
"How's that defined?" asks Helen.
"Not as broadly here as across the Atlantic—the Americans count anything that makes a wife unhappy," says Few with one of his flashes of wintry wit. "But Judge Wilde generally extends it to include any behaviour that causes the lady illness."
"Mrs. Codrington enjoys very good health," says Fido meanly.
***
In the cab, Fido's anger struggles with her mercy, and by the time they're on the dusty outskirts of Euston, anger has the upper hand. She clears her throat. "May I ask, who is Lieutenant Mildmay?"
Helen's slumped in the far corner.
"Another/n'end of the family's?"
Helen says, barely audible, "If you like."
"I don't." Fido rubs at a scrape on the back of her hand. "I don't like any of this. It seems to me we've left the truth far behind, and we're adrift in open seas."
"I dare say you're in a huff because I didn't mention Mildmay before."
"A huff?" Fido's voice rises to a shriek.
The small trapdoor in the roof opens with a thud. "All right in there, ladies?"
"Perfectly," she barks.
A second passes. "Very good," says the driver, shutting the hatch.
Fido's got her voice under control. "What, may I ask, is the point of playacting at friendship?" She waits. "I urge you to lean on me, I offer you my—all I have, all I am—and in return you keep shutting me out with your fibs and frauds!"
"Oh, Fido," says Helen exhaustedly, "you make it sound so simple."
"Isn't it? Open yourself to me, I say; tell me everything, so I can help you."
Helen's face, when she lifts it, is like a caved-in cliff. "There are limits to your love, like everyone else's."
"You wrong me," says Fido furiously.
"When I glimpsed you on Farringdon Street, last month—what ought I to have said?" Helen's eyes are huge. "That, since the last time we met, unhappiness had changed me in ways that would appall you? That not one, but two successive men had managed to dupe me into trusting them with my heart and drag me into the dirt?"
Fido struggles for words.
"Your life is such a clean, upright thing. You know nothing of getting into disastrous messes." Helen rests her forehead on one fist. "IfI'd told you all that, on Farringdon Street—how could you have resisted casting the first stone?"
Fido is blinded so fast she thinks something has struck her, but it's only tears. "Helen!" She moves to the other side of the vehicle and takes Helen by the shoulders. "I don't mean to pontificate, or play the prude. I want nothing more than to stand by your side, and support you through this terrible passage in your life. To lead you to the other side as fast as possible," she adds, "which is why I wanted you to plead guilty."
Helen's nostrils flare.
"Why not drop all this legalistic feinting, simply admit your mistakes, and beg Harry on your knees to let you see something of the girls?"
"Wasn't it you who told me the law belongs to men?" Helen demands. "What about the double standard? A man's reputation can survive a string of mistresses, but if I admit to one intrigue, let alone two, I'll lose everything. My name, my children, every penny of income..."
"Share mine." That comes out very hoarse. She tries again. "As long as I have a home, so do you."
"Oh, Fido." Helen subsides: shuts her eyes, rests her head on Fido's shoulder as simply as a child.
Fido can feel Helen's hot breath against her throat. "Sh," she says, putting one hand up to the vivid hair. They ride in silence, right to Taviton Street.
***
The next day, Friday, Fido goes straight from the press to meet Helen at Few's chambers for another gruelling session. The solicitor keeps harping on his Five C's.
"Harry wouldn't bring me to parties," offers Helen, "could that count as cruelty?"
Fido has to repress a smile at the idea.
The solicitor pulls at his grey whiskers. "Ah—neglect, perhaps."
"Or if he did come, he'd stand around in a sulk, and go home early on the pretext of having papers to read—abandoning me to whatever escort I could muster," Helen goes on. "Sometimes he wouldn't speak to me for days at a time—thwarted my management of the girls, and the house—confiscated my keys once."
Fido recognizes that as a story from the old days, at