"Salome. You adore Oscar Wilde."

"Great. When for?"

"Next Tuesday evening."

While I am forking duck into my gob I notice from the corner of my eye that Ronan's wineglass has halted in mid-air.

"But what's wrong with next Saturday?"

We normally go on Saturdays.

"There's a girls' night out next Saturday."

"What's wrong with the following Saturday?" he complains.

"The production ends this weekend."

I know because I checked.

He does not look pleased.

"Ronan, the point is: what is wrong with next Tuesday?"

"Actually, there's a problem."

"What?"

"There's a conference in Paris next Tuesday."

"Is that what you call it."

"It's a dentistry conference. I forgot to tell you about it."

"Aha."

"It's on an important topic: pyorrhoea alveolaris pyorrhoea alveolaris."

Whenever you feel horny and crave a dirty weekend, invent a conference abroad. Trouble is, he's been to dentistry conferences, aesthetics conventions, philosophy colloquia, art appreciation courses all over Europe. Where does that leave me?

"Why don't we both go?"

He shakes his head.

"Why not? While you're at the conference I'll go shopping."

"It's awkward: I'm staying with French friends in La Defense."

"I'm sure there'd be room for me in the bed."

"They only have a couch."

"I don't mind."

"If I remember correctly, it's a bit small. Even for one."

"So we'll stay at the Hotel Pierre, then. We're not poor."

"I must go easy," he says, replacing his glass. "The Porsche repairs have made one or two inroads into my vast fortune."

"I hope you're not overspending. You know how expensive it can be, buying for two."

I can almost hear a ton of scaffolding suddenly collapse inside his brain. I sip my wine in perfect innocence. His cheekbones are beginning to glow. I throw him a wicked grin. "I meanfor you and me."

He laughs, refilling my glass. "I thought you were on to me."

I want to scream at him once and for all. I want to purge it from my system because it's driving me crazy and I don't know how much longer I can keep up the charade.

But I must remain calm.

He, after all, is calm.

I rest my chin on my joined fingers and gaze nostalgically out of the window into the blushing evening. This section of the restaurant overlooks the canal, on the far side of which is a row of trees overhanging the bank. The treetops spike the clear but darkening golden sky like a thousand scissor tips.

I gulp down some sparkling water. I lean forward. "What's your opinion of adultery, Ronan?"

Pause.

"What's brought this on?"

"I just wanted your opinion. It's for a feasibility study I'm doing."

He grins. "Adultery is underrated."

"I see."

"Seriously though, there's one thing all women should understand about men." He pats his mouth with his napkin. "To most married men, a mistress is no more than a remote-control pleasure device."

I glance at the table next to us. "You mean, the wife has a remote prospect of controlling her husband's pleasure?"

"No, Julie. I'm referring to the convoluted world of male sexuality."

He takes a French roll from the basket, breaks it in half and starts to chew, although he's already finished his meal. "A mistress is simply an extension of male fantasy," he explains.

"I admit it hadn't occurred to me."

"Male fantasy life is intrinsically adulterous. It's back to geneticsman the hunter, the warrior, the adventurer, the guardian, the protector of women."

"What a quaint way to view life."

"What I'm trying to say is that adultery is a mental state."

"Although a bed comes in quite useful too."

He chews on his roll. "Beds are overrated."

"You prefer desks, then."

"Desks, tables, chairs...With the mind mind..." he points to his head, where he imagines his mind to be located "...with the mind, any position is feasible. It's all about imagination. The poetics of the possible. The point is, every man is guilty even before he has a so-called affair."

"So-called."

"It's just a word."

I want so badly, so desperately for Ronan to stop putting on this act. I want him so badly just to be himself, to hide nothing, to come clean. If only he did that I would be the best wife he could ever have. I would never nag him again. I would never question him again. Even my genetically encoded pestering response would shrivel up and die.

A waitress approaches with a dessert menu. Ronan shuns it and orders two coffees instead. She disappears.

I suddenly grab his hand on the table and hold it down.

"Ronan, I know there's something on your mind. I know there is. I know it's bothering you. Look at me, I'm talking to you. You know I love you, I knew from the first second I laid my eyes on you that we'd be together. We're so good together, everything is going so well: our careers, our home, we have fun...we've got so much ahead of us. I just, I just..."

He eyes me as if I am unclean. "I haven't an idea what you're talking about."

I am imploring him. Beseeching him. Appealing to every nerve fibre in his being that flickers in response to vulnerability, pity and humiliation. But he's frozen up like an igloo.

"Please, Ronan, tell me what's on your mind."

"There's nothing on my mind, for God's sake."

"Don't do this to me," I plead.

"Well, I mean, if I had a notion what all this was about."

He's testing me.

But I can't tell him. I can't. I cannot beg him to be honest. I cannot beg him to be loyal. I will not beg him to be faithful, to be true. I will not beg him to love me. If he doesn't want to love me the way I deserve to be loved, I will not force him. It must come from him.

"Ronan, whatever you've done it means nothing any more. There's just the two of us now."

"You think I'm having an affair, don't you?"

"Ronan, please don't lie to me. That's all I ask you. Don't lie to me. Because if you do, everything will change. And there will be no going back. I mean it."

"You think I'm having an affair." He laughs, like I'm a fool.

"I don't know."

"Yes, you do. You actually think I'm seeing someone." He's incredulous, contemptuous.

I can't believe he's doing this to me. I just can't believe it. "I didn't say that."

"You implied it."

"Well, is it true?"

"There you go again."

"Well, is it?"

He shrugs and says in a bored voice: "It's just your female insecurity."

It's unbearable.

"Please!"

"Julie..."

"Please, Ronan..."

"You're pestering me."

Dead silence.

He rearranges his napkin on his lap. The girl brings our coffees. Before she's even put mine down in front of me, I stand up and walk out through the restaurant.

He doesn't try to follow. At the doorway, when I look back, he is calmly sipping his coffee.

Once outside, I call Sylvana to instruct her to make up a spare bed.

Sunday, 19 June, afternoon

The name Mr Ronan Fitzgerald BA BDent SC is written in gold lettering on a plaque (good word, for a dentist), next to an assortment of less elegant-looking plaques for general practitioners and a chiropodist. His surgery is straight through at the bottom rear of the building, an extension built out into the garden to accommodate four rooms: the main surgery, the office, the kitchen and the bathroom, which is equipped with a built-in shower.

Using a key he gave me a long time ago, I let myself in through the main door and into Ronan's rooms. The smell hits me as I knew it would. That dentist's disinfectant odour. That minty Listerine scent you get from guys in the Law Library who figure that if they wash their gullets with the stuff they stand a better chance of a free screw.

I lock the door behind me.

Dentists. They've brought me such pain in life. They've burst my gums, picked my teeth, drilled and ravaged my nerves, pliered out my molars and snurgled my saliva. I've never liked them.

It's a miracle I married one.