"I don't know, Mere. He was pretty cute. Anyway, it's not like you have to live with him or anything. You just have to get him to knock you up." She thought for a moment and added, "He's tall too."

Meredith put a corner of the duvet in her mouth and gently began to suck. "That's true," she admitted.

"And he's got it bad for you."

Meredith shook her head to one side. She hated it when Mish exaggerated.

"I'm serious. He does. Have you talked to him?"

"No. Why?" Meredith lowered the duvet corner from her mouth. It was warm and damp, and the material was much darker where she had sucked it.

"I ran into him at some pub in Fulham the other night and he said he was trying to reach you. He wanted to invite us to a dinner at the club tonight."

Meredith shrank under the comforter and groaned. "I don't know. I'm not really feeling..." The rest of her excuse was lost in the moist polycotton stuffing.

"Oh, come on, it'll be fun. It's time you got out. We could get our hair done first. Toni & Guy takes walk-ins."

"I'm unemployed and broke."

"I'll pay."

"I'm in a bad mood."

"I'll cheer you up."

"I don't feel like talking to people."

"I'll do the talking."

"I want to be alone, okay?"

"Actually, no, it's not. Because if you don't come out to dinner with me tonight I'm going to sit here at the end of your bed and irritate you all night. So you won't get a chance to be alone one way or the other."

Meredith looked at the ceiling and pressed her lips together. They were dry and flaking off in little papery scales. She picked off a bit and was about to put it in her mouth and nibble on it to see if she was salty from dehydration when she remembered Mish was there and flicked it somewhere down the bed.

"Fine, then."

Two hours later Meredith stood in the club draining a gla.s.s of champagne behind a velvet window drape. The people here, she knew, would call it a curtain, not a drape. She would call it a curtain too, but in her head she would think of it as a drape. There were other rules like that: couches were sofas, bathrooms were loos. The reuse of jam jars was frowned upon as was taking off your shoes in public or any overt obsession with household cleanliness. All of these things, Meredith had learned since arriving in London, were telltale signs of being middle-cla.s.s and provincial. Meredith had never thought of herself as either, but now that she considered it, she supposed she was probably both. She had never really thought about cla.s.s or religion or race at all, in fact, because no one in Toronto ever seemed to bring it up. She had been raised in an inst.i.tution that protected her from this strange minefield of rights and wrongs that went far beyond social etiquette and became an encoded language based on tiny signals that indicated your entire background and even, in certain eyes, your life's worth. In London, it was as if the sum of everything you had ever done or experienced could be tallied and measured by the way you p.r.o.nounced the word "vase."

She rubbed her throat, hoping to dissolve the mysterious lump that was threatening to cut off her air. The club bar was far more crowded than it had been the last time she'd come with her mother and Mish for dinner. There was some sort of book launch being held. A biography of an eighteenth-century d.u.c.h.ess. Barnaby had left their names at the door but was nowhere to be seen. Within seconds of arriving Mish had disappeared into the back garden to smoke a joint with a group of journalists whom she seemed to know from somewhere.

The room was packed with people Meredith neither knew nor trusted. They all seemed to adore one another. The air was full of the premature applause of greetings: lips smacking cheeks and palms patting backs, squeals of exaggerated delight. A haze of Turkish tobacco hung above the crowd. Free champagne circulated on filigreed silver trays but did not make it anywhere near Meredith's hiding spot at the far side of the room near the garden window. Her gla.s.s was empty. Meredith peeked through the curtains and looked across the bar to where rows of flute gla.s.ses brimmed with fizz, lined up for the taking. It was a terrible whatchamacallit. A catch-22. She wanted one of those gla.s.ses badly, but she was not brave enough to walk through the chattering throng to get it. The only thing that would give her the courage to get another gla.s.s of champagne was another gla.s.s of champagne.

The party guests were either very young or very old, with no one in between. Closest to her was a long thin woman in her late teens or twenties with bulbous eyes set so far apart she looked like an exotic insect. Meredith recognized her as a model. She was listening to a grizzled count who had, many years ago, been narrowly acquitted of murdering his wife. "It's just for show really," he said, holding up an ivory walking stick. "I use it for beating women. They love it, of course." The model laughed and wriggled as if she were being pinched all over.

Meredith recalled there had once been a movie about the count. About the story of his trial. It had been released years ago, and in it he'd come off looking very guilty, but s.e.xy and clever. Meredith wondered how the count felt about the movie. She wasn't the sort of person to ask him, but wished she were. The count leaned over and whispered something in the girl's ear. The model pushed two fingers inside the old man's vest, pulled out a heavy gold pocket watch on a chain and looked at it. They kissed on both cheeks three times, and separated.

With no one to spy on, Meredith found herself suddenly exposed to the room. It made her feel naked and jumpy, like being on the subway without a book to read. She inched her body out from behind the drapes. She had lost weight. The lightness made her feel like a paper-doll version of herself.

Why was she being such an invalid? Why shouldn't she just stride across the room and take a gla.s.s and drink it? But each time Meredith lifted her shoe to move it forward, her lungs threatened to collapse. Her mouth was dry and her windpipe stuck to the inside of itself every time she inhaled. There were two strange horizontal black bars at the top and bottom of her vision and they began to slide toward each other like a letterboxed film on a plasma-TV screen. She watched them dispa.s.sionately, wondering when they would meet and leave her in darkness. Perhaps she was going blind. She had forgotten about champagne by this point and now thought only of water. Water and a gulp of outside air. Something to lift the sandbag from her chest. If only someone would open a window. Or bring her a chair to sit on. But before she could ask for any of these things, the room faded.

After that, blurred light and distant noises. A woman's panicky hoot. A hand behind her head and another beneath her knees. The herbacious smell of Marlboro Lights.

"I'm fine," she tried to say, but it did not seem to come out that way. She tried to sit up but the hands that were holding her gently pushed her back down. She had been placed, horizontal, on some sort of daybed. The kind of sofa that existed only in New Yorker cartoon shrinks' offices. Meredith thought this was funny and wanted to say so, but when she tried to make words they turned to porridge in her mouth.

"Look at her face," someone said. "She's white as a sheet."

"More of a puce," said another voice. "Poor thing."

Soon a cool bottle was being pressed against her cheek.

"Here," said a voice.

She lifted her head and began to retch. Several convulsing contractions, like a humiliating reverse labor, except she had eaten nothing, so nothing came out but an acid drizzle that burned her throat and made her tongue feel numb. She sensed people watching her and felt terribly ashamed. Why wouldn't they go away? Everyone but the hands that carried her here and the voice. The voice saying, "Darling. My poor darling." Somewhere far away but coming closer. She took a sip of water and a slow breath and opened her eyes.

"Meredith, my poor sweet," Barnaby said. One of his hands cupped her head and the other dabbed her chin with a handkerchief. "Shall I take you up to my room so you can lie down in private?"

"Yeth," she said.

And he scooped her up in his arms and carried her upstairs to bed. She was safe.

The next morning she woke to the sound of a vacuum cleaner. Why? she wondered. It was as if the EU had pa.s.sed a law stating that all hotel hallways must be vacuumed by nine a.m. or proprietors would be fined. She saw that she had been sleeping in a narrow single bed with a metal tube frame that reminded her of ones in an orphanage.

A rickety wooden dresser stood cowering in the corner. The top of it was covered with small change. Thick shiny pounds and burnished pence pulled from someone's pockets. A frayed shirt cuff struggled to flee the top drawer.

Meredith was still fully dressed. She searched the room with her eyes and found the shoes on the floor, arranged neatly together under the windowsill. At some point between her pa.s.sing out and the open bar closing at the book launch, she recalled, it had been decided she should stay the night at the club. She remembered Mish coming into the room, wobbling with a drink and gushing apologetically for abandoning her, and then her mother, who turned up at the party as well, asking her if she wanted to go, as the last tube was leaving shortly.

Meredith didn't recall speaking to her. These recollections were followed by a sleep so deep she felt as if she had emerged from it into another dimension of reality.

Meredith closed her eyes again and pulled the pilly flannel sheet under her nose. It occurred to her that she felt better than she had in many days. Must be the change of scenery. Something about her mother's flat was making her crazy and depressed. She would look into that. That and what she was going to do now that she had no job and no real reason to be here. Her money was running low, and she could not bear the thought of asking her mother for a penny. Soon she would have to return to Toronto and her hamster-cage condo. She thought of the stainless steel appliances, the way they picked up every fingerprint and smudge of cooking oil no matter how often she wiped them down, and shuddered. She realized she didn't want to go back. Not because of her empty condo, but because of her empty life.

The years after she'd graduated from school and begun working seemed to slide together in her mind, each one indistinguishable from the next. For a long period she and Mish had roomed together in a big ground-floor apartment on Shaw Street. Then Mish had moved out to be with her boyfriend (a manic-depressive tabla drummer named Ned). Meredith had tried other women roommates but they drove her up the wall in various minor, yet unignorable ways-one was a hummer, another talked at her through the bathroom door, and the last one came with a p.i.s.sing cat-until she decided to forget it and just buy a place on her own. She didn't care where, really, as long as it was clean and affordable, and she could be alone and in peace. But mostly just alone.

There had been guys. Guys who took her out to movies and dinner and showed up with half-wilted tulips from the grocery store. Guys who stayed overnight and made her scrambled eggs in the morning (which she loathed). There was one guy who even took her home to Sudbury to meet his retired schoolteacher parents. But never anyone she would have considered sharing a home with, let alone a future. The roommate thing had put her off the idea of living with other people. Other people who didn't share her DNA anyway. Maybe it was the result of growing up an only child at a boarding school, but Meredith had never been particularly inclined toward the idea of sharing her life. She wanted a baby, yes, but that was more of a continuation of existence rather than a concession. She wanted a whole new reality, rather than a merged one. A part of her, rather than a partner. It was, she realized with a chill, probably the same way her mother had once felt.

She wondered what time it was. There was no clock on the wall and she had left her watch at Coleville Terrace. Meredith began to sit up, and as she did there was a soft knock on the door.

"Just a minute," she said in a higher-than-normal voice, and she looked around for her clothes before remembering she had slept in them.

She kicked at the covers and tried to hop out of bed but her feet got caught in the sheets, and in her struggle to rise she fell off the bed and onto the floor with a humiliating thump on her right b.u.m cheek. She grunted and the door opened at the sound. Barnaby was standing behind it holding a tray with plates and a small vase with a bit of holly. His hair was sticking up and his eyes were showing a lot of white.

"Are you all right, then?" He placed the tray on the threshold and stepped over it to where Meredith lay, stiff beneath her sheets. "Oh, poor you," he said.

"I'm fine, I'm fine. This time I mean it."

Barnaby helped her up and she shook his hand off her arm once she was standing, the sheets in a white cotton puddle around her stocking-clad feet. He didn't seem to notice this rebuke and went straight for the tray, picking it up and holding it out in front of him with stiff toy-soldier arms. His eyes were glazed but expectant.

"I brought you some breakfast," he said. "I hope you don't mind the intrusion."

Why was he being so nice? There was a small black comb on the dresser and she wanted to pull it through her hair, but not in front of him. Meredith smoothed her dress flat and picked some bits of lint that had attached themselves to the material during the night. The room seemed far too small for the two of them. She suddenly had the feeling of being on a steamer ship, heading across the ocean for the first time. Imagine, she thought, living like this for weeks on end.

Barnaby showed no sign of leaving. He sat down on a small chair across from the bed and placed the tray on the bedside table. The reading lamp had to be moved to the floor to make room. Meredith stole a glance in the mirror above the dresser and noticed a ruddy lipstick smudge on her chin. She licked her thumb and tried to rub it off.

"Please sit," Barnaby said, indicating the unmade bed.

Meredith did and felt immediately more comfortable.

"I guess I ought to say thank you," she said. Then, feeling bad, she rephrased it. "What I meant to say is, thank you."

"Nonsense." Barnaby closed his eyes and shook his head, snorting a little through his nose. "I just gave you a place to stay. You seemed so...unwell."

"I guess I have been lately. It's staying with my mother, I think. And the movie and everything..." She trailed off, realizing she couldn't possibly explain the story of how she had been fired. Not that Barnaby would have asked her to. He never intentionally did anything to make her uncomfortable.

"Mish told me you decided to leave your job."

She shrugged and smiled a little, and his expression brightened in a way that made her feel apprehensive. "Thanks for letting me stay here," she said, letting her face drop into seriousness. "I'll pay you back for the room."

"G.o.d, no," he almost shouted, and then caught himself and leaned back slightly. "I insist."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, yes. Really."

"Okay. I mean, if you insist." Meredith was secretly relieved. She had no cash with her and her credit card was nudging its limit. "Where did you sleep, then?"

"Oh, well." He shook his head dismissively as though the matter of where he slept was trivial. "The club manager was very accommodating."

"They gave you another room?"

"No, actually they were entirely booked. I slept on the sofa in the lounge."

"Oh G.o.d, Barnaby, I'm so sorry."

"Don't be. Really. For once I had a good excuse to close the place down. And it certainly isn't as though it's the first time I've ever spent the night on a pub sofa."

Meredith laughed, and Barnaby's eyes seemed to dart out of his head. They smiled at each other for a long moment and blood began to thump in her ears. She coughed and searched for an excuse to change the subject, or, more specifically, she sought to ward off whatever subject she sensed he was about to bring up.

"Did you find your birds?"

"The owl and the vulture came back, yes. They're actually quite tame and old, so I knew they would. But I fear two of the young falcons are gone for good."

"Will they be able to survive?"

"I should think so. Better than you or I. It's just the loss of the time. All the training gone to waste. Anyway, I shall be leaving Pear Cottage shortly, so they wouldn't have me to return to even if they did."

"Why?"

"Things with my brother have degenerated, and I think it's time I found somewhere else to live, at least for a little while. I'll still have the cottage for holidays, of course, but living there all the time was becoming...untenable."

Meredith touched the back of his hand.

"I'm actually thinking of getting a job."

"Really?" She squeezed his fingers and hoped he did not find the gesture gushy.

"There's a falconry centre down the road in Gloucestershire. They've got hundreds of birds and they're always short on trainers and people to do flying demonstrations, so I thought I might...help out."

"Barnaby, that's great. I mean, it really is. You're changing your life. That's amazing."

Her hand was still on top of his and he surprised her by placing his other hand over hers and pressing down.

"Meredith, I've been thinking about what you said. About our talk that weekend. Specifically it made me think that I want different things from the things I thought I wanted before. Not that I thought I really wanted anything in particular. The point was I didn't really know. I had no idea. Until now, that is."

Meredith waited.

"I was wondering if you would ever consider coming to Gloucestershire with me. To live. I mean to-to live as my wife."

Meredith pulled her hand out from between his so fast she accidentally slapped herself. Words began to pour. "Wow. That is huge. I mean, that is such a big thing you just asked me. I really don't know what to say. Hmm."

He put a finger to her lips to make the words stop.

"It's just that I know you want to have a baby-which I think is wonderful, by the way-and I thought that, well, given that my brother seems to be having such a difficult time producing a son, maybe if we were to..."

"But what about Chubby?" Meredith said, touching her stomach.

"She gave birth last Thursday to a girl," Barnaby said. "Penelope. But everyone's taken to calling her Pud."

"Barnaby, look," Meredith said after a pause. "I just want to have a baby. I wouldn't make a good wife."

"To me you would."

"I know myself pretty well and I'm telling you now. I wouldn't."

He smiled, then reached out and caught her hand again. "You don't understand. If we are to have a son, we must get married."

"Why do you a.s.sume it would be a boy?"

"Of course I don't know that it would be a boy, but I should obviously hope-"

"Why? Don't you like girls?"

Barnaby laughed. "Of course I like girls. And I should like to have a dozen daughters after we marry and have a son."

"Why does it matter?"

"Because I told you-a legal heir can only be produced within the bonds of wedlock. I could leave you alone entirely. You could even have your own house if you wanted. Your own life. And I could have mine. I know it might seem unusual to you, but such arrangements are not as uncommon as you might think."

The room got much quieter after that. Meredith said something to the effect that she would think about it, and then tried to eat some of the breakfast Barnaby had brought up to her. The coddled eggs were slimy and the toast was hard. She took a few sips of lukewarm coffee mixed with some kind of milk formula and then reached for her bag. "Do you mind if I check my messages?" she said.