A week or so later, Lexie was having a bad day. She had been late for an appointment with someone at the Arts Council, the Tube train having sat in a tunnel for half an hour. She was supposed to be writing a piece on a production of Accidental Death of an Anarchist but the director she'd been hoping to speak to had come down with shingles so Lexie had to push the piece back a week and come up with something else at short notice. Felix had called three times this morning, in contrite, pleading mode. Lexie hung up on him every time. Theo had looked this morning as if he was coming down with a cold, and at the back of Lexie's mind all day was the hope that it was only a cold. She still hadn't got used to the constant undertow of maternal anxiety, the pull he exuded from their house in Dartmouth Park, as she went about her business in central London. He was her magnetic north and her needle swung always in his direction.

'Thank you so much . . .' Lexie was saying into her telephone, already halfway out of her seat and scrabbling with her spare hand for her bag under the desk. 'Please tell her I really appreciate it . . . Yes, absolutely . . . I'll be there in half an hour at the latest.'

She yanked on her coat, hauled her bag on to the desk and threw in a pad and pencil. 'Off to Westminster,' she said to her colleagues, 'if anyone asks. Back soon.'

She hurried into the corridor, belting her coat, going over in her mind what she needed to establish in the interview, when someone touched her elbow. She jumped and whirled round. There, next to her, was a man. The corduroy jacket, the open-necked white shirt were instantly familiar but it took her a moment to place him.

Robert Lowe. It was such an incongruous, such an unexpected sight Robert Lowe in the dingy corridor of the Courier that she laughed. 'Robert,' she said. 'It's you.'

He shrugged. 'It's me.'

'What are you doing here?'

'Actually,' he began, and then he stopped. 'I . . . I was seeing a friend who works at the Telegraph and . . . I thought, seeing as I'm on Fleet Street, that I'd come and look you up. But,' he gestured at her coat and her bag, 'you look as if you aren't in a position to be looked up.'

'Oh,' she said, 'I'm not. I'm having a rather disastrous day. I've got to go over to Westminster.'

'I see.' He nodded, pushed his hands into his pockets. 'Well . . .'

'You could walk me down to the street . . . if you like . . .'

'The street?'

'I have to find a taxi.'

'Ah.'

'Only if you have time.'

'I do,' he said. 'I will.'

Lexie walked ahead of him on the stairs. 'How are you?'

'I'm fine. And you?'

'Fine. As well. When did you get back from Ireland?'

'Yesterday.'

'Did you get much out of Fitzgerald?'

'Not a great deal.' He smiled. 'He's not an easy subject, as you know.'

'Yes.'

'I'll have to go back. In a month or so. Sometimes you can catch him on a talkative day. As you did. He was rather disappointed when you left.' He held open the door for her and as she passed through she thought she heard him add, 'As were we all,' but she wasn't sure.

Outside, the sky was flat and white above them. Lexie stood at the kerb, looking up and down Fleet Street. 'No taxis,' she said, 'of course.'

'There never are, when you want one.' He cleared his throat, folded his arms, then unfolded them. 'How's Theo?'

'He's fine. Got a bit of a cold.'

Robert came to stand next to her at the kerb. 'It means "God's gift",' he said.

'What does?' Lexie was distracted, straining her eyes into the traffic, searching for an orange light.

'His name. Theodore.'

She looked at him, amazed. 'Does it?'

'Yes. From the Greek theos, meaning God, and doron, meaning gift.'

'I had no idea. God's gift. You're the only person in the world who'd know that.'

There was a pause. They were two people standing on a pavement in the watery London sunshine, waiting for a taxi. It was a simple scenario but it seemed suddenly fraught with significance and Lexie wasn't sure why. She had to swallow and glance down at the ground to clear her head of the thought. 'It's nice to see you,' she said because it was and she couldn't for the life of her work out why he was here, on a Wednesday morning, in Fleet Street.

'Is it?' He passed a hand through his hair. Then he stretched his arm up in the air. 'There you are,' he said. 'Look.' A taxi slowed, swerved and arrived at the kerb.

'Thank God,' Lexie said, and climbed in. Robert shut the door for her. 'Goodbye,' she said, and put her hand out of the window. 'I'm sorry I had to dash.'

He took it and held it. 'I'm sorry too.'

'It was lovely to see you.'

'It was lovely to see you too.' They were talking like caricatures or people in a bad play. It was unbearable. He released her hand and she watched out of the window as the figure on the pavement got smaller and smaller.

A few days later she was coming into the reporters' room when her colleague Daniel waved the telephone receiver at her. 'For you, Lexie.'

'Lexie Sinclair,' she said.

'It's Robert Lowe,' came the familiar voice. 'Tell me, are you dashing about again today?'

'No. Not today. I'm . . . What am I doing? I'm lounging. By comparison.'

'I see. I'm not sure what lounging constitutes but does it allow for lunch?'

'It does.'

'Good. I'll be outside at one.'

In the event, they came straight to the point. There was no hedging, no pursuit, no uncertainty, no seduction. Lexie walked up to where he stood on the pavement. Neither of them said hello or made any greeting. She drew a cigarette out of the packet, put it into her mouth.

'You strike me,' he said, after a moment, 'as someone who is good with secrets.'

'Good in what way?' she said, searching her bag for matches.

'In that you keep them.'

'Oh, yes,' she said, and held the flare of a match to her mouth. 'Yes, of course.'

'You know that I'm married?'

'I do.'

'And so are you,' he held his hands up to ward off her interjection, 'or whatever you want to call it. I have no desire to leave my wife. And yet . . .'

Lexie exhaled her smoke. 'And yet,' she agreed.

'What shall we do?'

She thought for a moment. It occurred to her afterwards that he might have been talking about where to eat lunch. But at the time, she said, 'A hotel?'

Such deals can be struck so easily sometimes.

They went to a street near the British Museum where there were several hotels that accepted people during the day. Lexie didn't ask how Robert knew this. The room had velvet curtains of a faded blue, a potted fern, a washbasin with a chipped mirror. There was an electricity meter that wouldn't accept any of their shillings. The pillows were hard, the sharp ends of feathers prickling from the cotton cases. They were both nervous. They made love quickly, more from a desire to get it done, to gain that sense of having embarked. Then they talked. Robert tried again to feed shillings into the meter, with no success. They made love again, with more leisure and more skill this time. As she dressed, Lexie watched the clouds piled up beyond the narrow window.

The arrangement they devised was simple, straightforward, perfect, you might say, worked out in moments. They would meet twice a year, no more, and never in London. An exchange of telegrams was to be their method. THE GRAND HOTEL, SCARBOROUGH, they might read, THURSDAY 9 MARCH. And nothing more. No one was ever to know. They never spoke of Robert's family, of his wife Marie. Lexie never enlightened him as to what had happened with her and Felix. Robert never asked, never questioned why Theo always came with her to their assignations. Perhaps he guessed the truth of the situation, perhaps not.

It was hard to know whether Theo remembered Robert, from one time to the next. He was always pleased to see him, always took him by the hand and dragged him away to show him something a crab in a bucket, a shell from the beach, a stone with a hole worn through it.

Mrs Gallo and Lexie were in the kitchen, fiddling with the cooker dials and arguing amiably about whether or not it was right for Mrs Gallo to cook Lexie a chicken pie. Mrs Gallo had just commandeered the oven when the doorbell rang.

'I'll go,' said Lexie, backing away from the oven and touching Theo's head as she passed. He was piling cushions into a soft, towering heap.

'Darling,' Felix said, when she opened the door, stepping forward to envelop her in a rather lingering embrace, 'how are you?'

'Fine.' Lexie disentangled herself from him. 'I didn't know you were coming. You should have phoned.'

'Don't be anti-social. Can't I drop in on my son and heir if I want to?'

'Of course. But you should phone first.' They glared at each other in the close confines of the hallway.

'Why?' he said, without moving his eyes from her face. 'Who have you got here?'

She sighed. 'Paul Newman, of course. And Robert Redford. Come and meet them.'

'Going away, are you?' he said, pointing at the bags in the hall. Lexie and Theo had just returned from seeing Robert in Eastbourne.

'Just got back, actually,' she threw over her shoulder, as she walked into the sitting room, where Mrs Gallo was watching Theo leap off the sofa and on to the cushions.

Felix stood at the edge of the rug, like a man hesitating before deep water. 'Hello, young man,' he boomed down at Theo, before nodding at Mrs Gallo. 'Mrs Gallo, how are you? You're looking terribly well.'

Mrs Gallo, who did not entertain a high opinion of Felix, based on the view that any man worth his salt would have made an honest woman of Lexie long ago, gave a sound between a tut and a cough.

Theo looked up at his father and said, with devastating clarity, 'Robert.'

Lexie almost laughed but managed to stop herself. 'Not Robert, sweetheart, it's Felix. Felix. Remember?'

'Who's Robert?' Felix was saying, as Lexie went into the kitchen.

She ignored him. 'Would you like tea, Felix? Coffee?'

He followed her into the kitchen, just as she had known he would. She got out three mugs from the cupboard, milk from the fridge, eyeing Felix as she did so. He read the notes pinned to her fridge; he picked up a beaker of Theo's, looked at it, put it down again; he took an apple from the fruit bowl, then put it back.

'How's work?' he said abruptly.

Lexie filled the kettle at the tap. 'Fine. Rushed. You know.'

'I saw your piece on Louise Bourgeois.'

'Oh.'

'It was very good.'

'Thank you.'

'I . . .' he began, then stopped. He leant on the counter and buried his head in his hands. Lexie replaced the lid on the kettle, then put it on the hob, striking a match and holding the flame to the gas, all the time watching Felix or, rather, the top of his head.

'I've got myself into a bit of a tight spot,' he said, his voice muffled behind his hands.

'Oh?' Lexie opened the caddy and spooned tea leaves into the pot. 'What kind of tight spot?'

'There's a girl.' Felix straightened up.

'Ah. And?'

'She . . . she tells me she's got a bun in the oven. Claims it's mine.'

'And is it?'

'Is it what?'

'Yours.'

'I don't know! I mean . . . it could be, I suppose . . . but how does one ever know?' He glanced at Lexie, then said hastily: 'I don't mean you, darling, I mean her. It's not that often we've . . . that she and I . . . I mean, I've hardly . . . you know.'

'I see. Well, you'll have to take her word for it, I suppose.' She gives him a sideways look. 'What does she want to do about it?'

'That's just it,' Felix says despairingly. 'She says we have to get married. Married!' He pushed himself away from the kitchen cupboard and roamed to the window and back. 'The idea makes me sick. And now,' he muttered, 'I've got her damn mother breathing down my neck as well. And a right battleaxe she is.'

The kettle started to shudder and tremble, letting out a jet of steam. Just as the whistle shrilled in the kitchen, Lexie seized it and lifted it off the heat. She put it down next to the sink. She placed her hands on the edge of the cupboard. She didn't look at Felix. She could see the backs of his trouser turn-ups, his heels, as he stood at the window. 'Are we,' she said, 'talking about Margot Kent?'

His silence was enough. She saw his feet move as if he was about to come towards her. Then he must have changed his mind because he headed for the table. She heard him pull out a chair, sink into it. 'It's damned bad luck,' he murmured. 'That's what it is.'

When she didn't answer, he fidgeted in his chair, twisting round and twisting back. 'I don't want to marry her,' he said, a trifle petulantly. 'I think it's all her bloody mother, pushing her from behind.'

Lexie let out a short bark of a laugh. 'I'll bet,' she said.