'Only if I die unexpectedly between now and my next confession. You're damned anyway, of course. Atheists are.'

'You go to confession?'

Mark grinned.

'When the mood takes me.'

'Do you confess this?'

'This?'

'What we do, all of this. You know.'

'I confess everything. It feels wonderful. I come out and feel that I've never done anything wrong in my life, that God has forgiven all and I am utterly new again.'

'And then what? Start your wickedness all over again?'

Mark flicked his eyes up at me and held my gaze. His eyes looked deep blue, cornflower blue and hooded, more mysterious than ever.

'This isn't wickedness, James.' He leaned forward and planted a kiss lightly on my lips, pulling away when I tried to draw him closer. 'Don't you realize that you are the thing that allows me to be a good husband?'

He jumped to his feet faster than I could manage and was off and out of the barn while I was still struggling to pull myself upright and go after him.

Mark and I did not always have sex when I visited Dorblish. During Daisy's first two years of life, he came to London half a dozen times, and on each occasion we reverted to our usual ways, but the distance between each visit was so great that, each time, I began to wonder whether in fact we had now finished with that episode in our lives, whether the occasional lapse was a mere aberration. I was even able to convince myself that this was what I wanted. After all I was able to think away from Mark's presence hadn't our affair run its course?

And then he would call some afternoon and say, 'Oh, James, I thought you might like to know I'm running up to town for a few days next week. It's half-term, isn't it, James? Would you like to meet up? At my flat, on Tuesday afternoon?' And I would say yes. And when we met he would stand above me and gently insist that I admitted the truth, and I might enquire, 'What truth?' and he would explain that I knew quite well what he meant, and prove it to me until I could only shout out that yes, I still desired him, that yes, I wanted him, and this gave him satisfaction.

Daisy grew sturdy and sweet. She learned to say her own name, 'Daidy', and mine. She began to recognize Jess and me, to trust us as she trusted her family. Once, on a walk, she could not quite clamber over a fallen log and held out her little hand to mine with such an expectation of my aid that I felt suddenly heartsick at the charm of her. I wondered then what she might make of me when she was grown. If she knew the truth, what would she think? Dirty old man, corrupter of parents, breaker of sacred trusts. She already knew how to place her hands together to pray with Nicola before bed; she would grow up a Catholic child, and I doubted that her views on morality would be as flexible as Mark's. I took her hand and grabbed her around the waist, lifting her high into the air as she giggled and shrieked. But she'd already grown too old to enjoy being held. As soon as we were past the log, she struggled and wriggled until I put her down.

Did I imagine it, or did Nicola not want me around her child? I began to notice this, or think I noticed it, when Daisy was nearly two. There began to be a little habit. Jess and I would arrive for a weekend and Nicola would say, 'Good news, my parents are taking Daisy for the weekend. You've just got time to say goodnight to her and Mark will drive her round.'

And we'd protest of course, but Nicola would say, 'No, we grownups should be allowed to talk. I'm sure that's what Mark wants, isn't it? Grown-up talk like you have in London.'

And there was a little business of bringing Daisy out, beginning to be sleepy in her pyjamas and socks, and a round of kissing and maybe a story or a game, and then Mark would buckle her into the car seat and drive her around to Nicola's family. They were so close that this back and forth was constant; they drove to each other for meals, to watch television in the evening, and to ferry Daisy between all the places she was loved the best. Mark had his wish: to be at the heart of such a family.

And at this point, Mark would say, 'Oh, James, keep me company on the drive?'

And I would say yes of course, certainly I will.

And on the way back there was a place, invisible from both houses, a sharp bend in the road where we would stop the car and allow ourselves to be overtaken by desire. Cars rocketed past us round the bend, faster than I thought safe, but we were parked on the verge and Mark would say, 'It's fine, it's fine, they go faster in the country than we do in the city.' And I thought of making some joke about how fast we were going now, but the moment had passed and his scent was too intoxicating and his hand on the bare skin at the small of my back was too great for thought.

And one night, after one of these visits, driving back home to London, Jess said, 'Darling, something awful.'

She was driving. I was lolling in the passenger seat, drifting on the edge of sleep.

'Mmmm?'

'Nicola thinks Mark's having an affair.'

I was cold. Just that. As if I might have been cold for a long time but had only just noticed. I tried to decide what sort of noise an innocent man might make.

'Really?'

'Mmm-hmm.'

A click, a tick-tock. Jess changed lanes.

It seemed plausible to sit up a little, to open my eyes.

'Does she know who with?'

Jess shook her head, keeping her eyes on the road.

'She thinks it's someone he sees in town.'

Cold again. Very cold. Cold and empty.

'Huh,' I said.

'Have you ever seen him with anyone?'

I swallowed, made a noncommittal hmming sound.

'Don't think so. Not that I've noticed.'

Jess nodded.

The traffic thickened a little. The car slowed. I opened the window a crack. To the right and left of us were luminous yellow fields of rape and lanes of traffic, fumes, honking.

I swallowed. 'It'd hardly be surprising, would it? I mean, we know what Mark's like.'

Jess nodded. 'Yes,' she rolled her shoulders, stretching the joints. 'I think Nicola wants us to talk to him for her ... but there's nothing we can say really, is there? He is how he is. He always has been.'

A pause. The traffic inched to a standstill. An engine revving behind us.

'What's she going to do?'

Jess pursed her lips. 'I tried to explain that maybe it's not about her. And perhaps she should talk to him. Or find a way to let him know she knows. Because it needn't mean the end to a relationship. Not everyone thinks that way. Perhaps Nicola could find a way to accept it.' She sighed. 'But I don't think she understood. I think, if she found out it was true, she would take Daisy and leave.'

The cars ahead started to move again. Jess nudged the car into gear and began to gather speed.

21.

Nicola's voice, whispering from behind the hedge, said, 'Yes, I'm sure she does, but you'll have to tell her they aren't suitable.'

Then Mark's voice, angry but restrained: 'I'm not telling her anything of the sort. They're family stones. Daisy can have them set differently when she's older.'

'She's not having them set at all. I don't want any presents from your mother. You know how she spoke to me when we ...'

'She speaks to everyone like that. It's only that you take everything so bloody personally. Look ' now he was wheedling slightly 'it's not for you or me, it's for Daisy ...'

'I don't care, I don't bloody care. She doesn't need your family's presents.'

'Oh, for fuck's sake, Nic ...'

'Don't use that language with me.'

'Oh, what, fucking what?'

A caught-back sob from Nicola, could have been a laugh or a cry of despair.

And then from Mark simply, 'Nic ...'

And then, 'Don't you touch me.'

At my elbow Nicola's little sister Eloise said, 'Uncle James, I think Daisy's done a poo in her knickers.'

Eloise, who had reached the stage of braces and awkwardness, was holding Daisy at arm's length towards me. From the smell of her, Eloise was right. Daisy's face was screwed up, her body trying to wriggle away.

'Dowwwwwwn,' she wailed, 'want go dowwwwn.'

When we rounded the end of the hedge, Mark and Nicola were gone.

And then again, later, in the conservatory. Dark clouds lowering at the horizon, wind whipping up although the day was still bright in our little square of green. Daisy reached out her chubby little arm to her birthday cake and said, 'Cick! Cick!' so Mark cut her another slice and placed it in her reverently open hands. She looked at it with rapt attention her mother had fed her some earlier with a spoon then, decisively, buried her face in the cake, came up smothered in chocolate and wiped her hands down her dress.

I was just beginning to laugh when Nicola turned round, looked at her daughter and said, 'For God's sake, Mark, why the hell did you do that? Look at her! Just look at her!'

And it was too sharp, too angry, too loud. It was disproportionate, so that for a moment we were all staring at Nicola. And she felt it too, the heat of inappropriate rage.

'Come here, Daisy,' she said, and pulled the child to her a little too roughly, crouched down and began to scrub at her face with a napkin a little too forcefully.

Daisy, feeling the pressure of so many eyes on her, burst into noisy tears. Nicola sat back on her haunches with a sigh, releasing Daisy's arm, and the little girl ran stumbling to her father, burying her face in his cream trouser leg, covering it in chocolate.

Mark lifted her up, cuddled her to his chest, more chocolate everywhere.

'Shhh,' he said, 'it's all right, Mummy didn't mean to upset you, did you, Mummy?'

And Nicola looked up from her crouch at the circle of her family around her, and at Mark holding Daisy, and at Daisy's smiling complacent face, now that she had attained her father's arms. Nicola made a low noise at the back of her throat, got to her feet and reached for Daisy, but Daisy snuggled closer to her father. Nicola's mouth turned down, her arms still outstretched for her daughter. Her brow darkened, she took a breath to speak but instead turned on her heel and marched back into the house and upstairs.

There was a moment of silence.

Nicola's father said, 'Well then.'

Rebecca said, 'More cake for anyone?'

But soon many of us had to leave.

Nicola did not come down to see us off. We stood in the outer atrium with Mark, next to the piles of presents which had been sent by Simon, who could not come, and Emmanuella, who could not come, and Franny, who also, for some reason, could not come. Daisy was climbing over Mark, as if he were a tree, biting at his neck and ear, pulling on his shirt, popping off buttons as she clambered and dangled.

'I'm sorry about Nic,' he said. 'She's got a headache.'

'It's all right,' said Jess. 'Tell her we send our love. We'll see her next time we're down.'

I leaned in to hug Mark goodbye, and as I did so Daisy detached herself from him and, for a moment, put her arms around my neck. With her softness, she planted a wet kiss on my cheek, unbidden. I have remembered this so often that the memory is worn through and now I wonder if I imagined it entirely.

Mark waved us off as we drove away. I looked back, and saw Daisy still clambering and exploring the contours of her father. And when I think of Daisy now, that is how I remember her still. Slung in Mark's arms like a monkey swinging in a tree. Climbing over him like he was the most solid thing she knew.

About six weeks after that, Mark called me.

He said, 'James?' in a broken voice. 'I'm in London, because Nicola,' but he could not finish the sentence. The tears overran him and he gulped to a wheezing halt.

'Are you at the flat?' I said. 'Do you want me to come over?'

'Yes,' he said. 'Yes please.'

It surprised me, considering the matter as I drove to Mark's flat, that he was so devastated. Perhaps it surprised me that Nicola had managed to accomplish this thing; to pierce the armour and wound him. I have never been able to hurt him myself. I might say I have never wanted to hurt him, but it's not true. I wish he cared enough about me that I could hurt him. I wish I thought that my leaving would cause him pain. I wish I felt I had ever meant more to him than someone convenient to pass a pleasant afternoon or weekend with. I wish that I could break him by telling him I have ceased to love him, but I can't. He will never cry those tears for me. Sometimes contemplating this makes me so angry that I find I want to hurt him. But, of course, that is the one thing I can't do.

When I arrived at the flat, Mark was crumpled in a brown leather sofa by the window. His eyes were bloodshot; the tip of his nose was red. He was wearing a ragged jumper and a pair of old, paint-stained jeans. I let myself in, and he opened his arms wide, like a toddler looking for comfort. I hugged him, his head on my shoulder and the wet of his weeping trickling on to my shirt. After a while, he dis entangled himself from me and I poured us both whiskies.

Mark said, 'This is it. She wants a divorce.'

I nodded.

'She thinks I'm seeing someone else. I tried to tell her she was being silly but she's so ... she's very final, you know?'

I knew.

'And anyway, look. You're not someone else, are you?'

Suddenly I was afraid, with a fear louder than my concern for Mark's marriage.

'Did you tell her it was me?'

He shook his head. 'I mean, it's not just ...' He chewed at his thumbnail. 'You knew that, didn't you, James? You knew that it wasn't just you, didn't you?'

I nodded creakily. I supposed I had known, in a way. He began to sniff again.