The waitress brought the pudding menu.

After her mother died, three years before, Cora had been in a bad way.

Through the last months of her mother's illness, she had made a good nurse, resourceful and resilient. Robert had been moved to find that the wilful girl he married, with her strong gift for pleasure, had this patience in her. When, after a spell in hospital, Rhian had come home to die, Cora had risen to the occasion as if it were a test, like other tests she'd always pa.s.sed with flying colours. She hid her own desperation from her mother; she worked as if she was part of the team of doctor and cancer nurses who came to the house, and they had praised her steady, unsqueamish caring. Whatever happens, I will be with you, she had said to her mother calmly, and her calm had seemed to help. Rhian had been querulous in life, but was rather stoical at the conclusion of it. Near the end, Cora had seemed to know how to make the dying woman more comfortable on her pillows, lifting her so gently and exactly.

Carelessly, Robert had presumed without thinking about it that this new strength would be part of Cora permanently. However, as the months pa.s.sed after Rhian's death, she was hardly recognisable as that capable nurse, wise instinctively about entrances and exits. Her old energy seemed irrecoverably broken. She wouldn't talk to him about her parents; wrung with pity for her, he wondered uncharacteristically if counselling would help, but she insisted she didn't want to talk to anyone. Drooping from her usual straight height, she complained of period pains, nursed a hot-water bottle to her stomach, went to bed early, watched television in the day. If they made love, it forced tears out of her eyes, which she tried to hide from him. He imagined her collapse as though she had drawn too deeply upon subterranean reservoirs of her nature that, once tapped, couldn't be replenished by any ordinary process of rest and recuperation. Her spirit seemed darkened and poisoned, and Robert suffered because he felt himself inadequate to clearing it.

Rhian had died in February; after Easter, Cora insisted on going back to teaching. At least it meant she had to get dressed in the mornings, and she had to prepare for her cla.s.ses and mix with her colleagues and students. But he was afraid it was too soon. One evening when he came in late from work, he found her sitting on the side of their bed in her coat with her knees together and a grey face, as if she had dropped there when she came in and hadn't moved since. Her heavy case, crammed full of books and marking, was at her feet.

How long have you been sitting here?

I don't know. What time is it?

Unwisely, kneeling to take off her shoes and help her out of her coat, he reopened a suggestion he had made before, and which she had fiercely rebuffed. Why didn't she give up teaching at the FE college? A friend of his had contacts at a private school, the conditions there would be so much easier, she could take on part-time hours to begin with, the kids were eager to learn.

Cora shrugged her arm out of her coat sleeve, pushing him away.

Why can't you get it into your head that I wouldn't work for a place like that, if it was the only school left on earth? I actually happen to prefer the kids I teach. They don't have much of a chance in life, I don't pretend I can do much to alter that. But at least I'm more useful, teaching them basic literacy skills, than cramming pampered brats for Oxbridge. And I don't have discipline problems. I'm an experienced teacher. Where do you get your ideas of what goes on in a place like ours: from the Daily Mail?

But look at you. You're desperate with fatigue. You owe it to yourself to take it easy. Just for a few months, till you're feeling better.

I suppose you're blaming my principles now, for me not getting pregnant?

He was slow to rearrange his insights in the light of this new element; he must have shaken his head, he thought afterwards, like the bewildered ox he was.

Getting pregnant? Is that what you want?

Oh, Robert: how could you not know?

But aren't you having those injections?

She said she had stopped having the injections two years ago: he was astonished, but didn't question that she hadn't discussed this with him at the time, or ever told him. She said that she had 'wanted it to be a surprise'. He accepted that in this area of experience women had a natural primacy, and must make up the rules according to their own mysterious intimations.

In two years, nothing had happened. This last week, she had been hopeful, but when she got home tonight, her period had come.

I suppose that Rhian knew about it?

Not only Rhian, it turned out, but Alan too. Part of Cora's grief was that they had been cut off without ever knowing their grandchildren.

Without having gone through the long build-up, with its slow cycles of antic.i.p.ation and disappointment, Robert was plunged suddenly into the extreme end of the angst of childlessness. But he put himself entirely at Cora's disposal. He would do whatever was necessary, if it would make her happy. Anyway, without thinking about it much, he had also always wanted to have children, at some indefinite future point. That seemed the right inevitable shape of their family, if they were a family: between the two of them, the vaguely sketched-in graduated sequence of their children, two or three never babies when he imagined them, but st.u.r.dy children in shorts and sunhats, with fishing rods, and their own plans. His picture was made in the mould of himself and his own siblings, and from the phase of childhood he had enjoyed most (when he was at prep school, and had spent summer holidays with his parents and siblings apart from Frankie, not born yet in a house at the top of steeply wooded cliffs in Devon). He had believed too, without acknowledging it to himself, that children would seal the bond of his marriage with Cora, which otherwise, even after all this time, he thought of as provisional and precarious. She might, if there weren't children, remove herself one day as arbitrarily as she had thrown herself at him in the first place.

So, three years ago, they had found themselves in the waiting room of a clinic in a handsome Georgian house in Wimpole Street, on the brink of their first appointment with the fertility doctor. Robert had made discreet enquiries of the right people, and found this was the place that got the best results. It was a close, wet June day, rain blowing in a warm mist in the streets, the pavements greasy with it. Cora, who had hardly noticed for months what clothes she put on in the morning, had dressed with feverish care for this appointment, as if she needed to seduce the doctor, not consult him. Now she was suffering because her Betty Jackson satin print blouse, with a bow at the neck, was stained with damp, and anyway was surely wildly inappropriate, making it appear that she wasn't serious about the whole process. She couldn't look at the other couples waiting with them. Afterwards, she wondered if she had hallucinated the fact that the walls of this room were covered, every square foot, with photographs of babies, of smiling mothers and couples with babies. It seemed too manic to be probable; and wouldn't it be an insensitive message, anyway, to blare at those who might, after all efforts, still fail to conceive?

Robert beside her was a dark ma.s.s, in suit and tie because he'd come from work to meet her here. Chairs in any public place always seemed too small for him, and it was surprising to see him reduced to a client or a patient in a queue like everyone else, as if all his body language by this time involuntarily exuded authority and control. He didn't give any sign, however, of minding waiting, or of wanting to be anywhere different. She wondered what he'd told Elizabeth about why he was leaving the office: nothing, she was sure, that would have given away Cora's business here, or her failure, or her desperation. Nonetheless, she burned with those things, just as if Elizabeth knew about them and everyone knew. She wished Robert had nothing to do with the whole process, and that she could have come by herself, in secret. Wasn't he only consoling her, playing along with one of her whims? She couldn't remember them ever discussing fertility treatments at a point before it would have been a subject charged with importance for her, but as they sat in silence she attributed to him a masculine disdain for them, a stoical preference for letting nature take its course, for the discipline of accepting whatever life sent. His views would be based on a long perspective, taking into account world population growth, viewing the cult of baby-making as a kind of sentimentality only available to those in the advanced economies.

She was in fact quite wrong about what Robert thought, but she seemed to hear these opinions uttered in his reasonable, reluctant, rather growling voice, which never ran on unnecessarily, but chopped and cut to minimise wasted words, always holding something back. The judgements she attributed to him threw her into an agitated dismay, so that she longed to get up and walk around the room, but didn't want to give herself away to the others waiting. Robert fetched her a drink of water from the cooler. Cora had some idea of the humiliations that awaited them, after the doctor had turned his doubtless considerable charm on them, although she wasn't sure whether they would happen today, or at a second appointment. It didn't matter if she was pushed and pulled about like a doll, and probed, she didn't care. But she scalded at the idea of the affront to Robert, shut in a little room, perhaps even a toilet, with magazines, to produce a sample. How could she allow it? This place and everything about it was a mistake, she was suddenly sure. There must be a way out from it, in which she was true to herself, didn't betray her deepest instincts.

She cast around, remembering the last days of her mother's illness. How had she summoned then that strength beyond herself, to act well? She remembered how at a certain point when she might have allowed herself to sink in suffering, the thought had come to her like an instruction: bite on the bitter pill. Bite hard. She had bitten hard, and the flood of strength that came had even had a savage joy in it. Now, too, she was carried away, in a suffering beyond her control. Cora stood up, the receptionist and the strangers in the waiting room looked at her, Robert looked.

I'm just stepping outside, she said loudly, picking up her mac and her bag. For a bit of fresh air.

In the street, the rain blowing at her was a balm; she lifted her face into it. Robert came hurrying after her, with the silk scarf she'd forgotten.

No, she said definitively to him, gripping his forearms. It isn't what I want.

Then that's all right, he said. She imagined he was relieved, although this wasn't in the least true, he was only trying to cover up his regret, so that she didn't feel she'd failed at anything. He was disappointed that what had seemed a way out of Cora's sorrows was a dead end.

Let's go somewhere and have lunch, he said.

Do you want to go back and tell them?

He was indifferent to the administrative hiccups at the clinic when they discovered that one set of clients had fled. It must have happened before. I'll phone them later.

Don't you have to be back in the office?

I told them I'd be away for a couple of hours. They won't expect me back till two. We've got till then.

She had wanted him to say that the office didn't matter.

II.

Cora, three years ago, on the train from Cardiff to Paddington.

It was a few weeks since she'd run away from the fertility clinic, almost six months since her mother died. Her teaching had more or less finished for the summer, and she was throwing herself furiously into the transformation of the Cardiff house, telling Robert she wanted to do it up to sell it. No matter what difficulties came up, how the builders found dry rot, or messed up the French windows in the extension, she encouraged herself: bite the bitter pill. She had got her force back, even if she didn't know what to do with it, and was only pressing mightily up against an invisible resistance. She had chosen a wood-burning stove, she had scoured the reclamation yards for antique tiles for the bathroom, for lovely old pink bricks. Now, outside the train windows, the afternoon landscape fumed with rain, the green fields and woods were secretive, withdrawn around their own dense history, pressed under a lead-coloured lid of sky. The train wasn't full; she sat at a table by herself. Dark drops rolled sideways along the window gla.s.s. For no reason, her heart was beating thickly, as if she was expecting something, though she wasn't, she mustn't look forward, because there was nothing ahead, nothing.

A man stopped beside her, carrying a cardboard cup of coffee from the buffet, a briefcase slung on a strap across his shoulder.

Do you mind if I sit here? I'm escaping from an idiot with a mobile phone.

How do you know I'm not one?

He glanced at her, taking her in quickly. You don't look like an idiot.

You're safe, she said. Mine's turned off.

Good girl.

Half-heartedly she was offended by his calling her a girl. Sitting down in the window seat opposite her, he got out a book from his briefcase and started to read. It was a book of poetry, by someone Cora hadn't heard of. She was embarra.s.sed that she was reading Vogue she knew the man had taken this in, in his quick survey, as a mark against her. She never used to buy magazines, but on her journeys backwards and forwards from Cardiff, not wanting to think too much, she tried to fill her head with ideas for things she might get for the house, or plans for new clothes.

He scowled into his book, gripping it as if he might tear it apart at the spine. Cora always looked at people's hands when she met them (Robert's were huge, with soft hollows in the palms and unexpectedly delicate finger ends). This man's hands were long and tanned and tense, slim as a woman's though he wasn't effeminate, one finger nicotine-stained, the nails naturally almond-shaped; when he took a mouthful of coffee she noticed that they shook. He wore a wedding ring. She thought he might be precious, or pretentious; there was something dissatisfied in his ripe, full mouth, although he was attractive, subtle-looking, only just beginning to lose his hair which was the colour of silvery washed-out straw at the temples. Under the hooding curved lids, she seemed to see the quick movements of his eyes as he read; he was a hawk, jabbing into his book for its meanings with an unforgiving beak. Determined not to care what he thought, she returned to her magazine. After a while he dropped the book down on the table. Cora looked up from serious contemplation of a winter coat.

You didn't like the poems, she said.

She expected his vanity to be gratified by her taking an interest in his opinion, but he only looked surprised that she had spoken, as if they existed in different worlds.

Do you read poetry?

She supposed he meant: as well as magazines.

I do. I'm an English teacher.

He wasn't enthusiastic. Oh, good for you.

Well, actually, I love what I do. But I don't get to teach much poetry.

Have you read this?

No, I've never heard of him. I don't think I'll bother now. You looked violent. I thought you might have thrown it out of the window, if these windows opened.

As a matter of fact, I did quite like it, he said. But not enough.

Enough for what?

After a pause he added that he wished the windows did open, because he would have enjoyed throwing books out of them, from time to time.

Cora had read that when someone is attracted to you they begin unconsciously imitating your own movements: she noticed that when she sat back in her seat now, he was drawn forward towards her, leaning his elbows on the table, frowning. It was obvious he didn't want to talk with her about poetry, dreading the conventional and gushing opinions she might try to impress him with, reluctant to unpack his own ideas for anyone not likely to appreciate them. He had a high opinion of himself, she thought: his surface as it met the world was obviously touchy, ready with disdain. He asked where she'd got on the train and whether she lived in Cardiff; she replied that she was born there, but lived in London.

Visiting your parents?

Cora explained that both her parents had died, and how she was doing up their house to sell. She expected him to say something sympathetic, but he only asked her what she felt about Welsh nationalism. She replied that her father had taught her to be suspicious of all nationalisms as parochial.

Sounds like a good old Trotskyite.

He made up his own mind about everything.

You're very Welsh.

She said she hated having any set of qualities foisted on her.

That's what I mean, he said. If you accuse anyone of being very English, they accept it apologetically.

His accent was English, neutral rather than distinctly ruling cla.s.s.

The train drew into the station at Swindon, new pa.s.sengers got on, someone hesitated in the aisle at their table. They made no effort to move their bags from the seats beside them; both looked studiedly out at the platform, where those who wanted a different train seemed to wait in suspension, in a vague dusty light, cut off from the rain that poured in streams from the ends of the roofs. The person moved on: there were plenty of other places to sit. Neither acknowledged that anything had happened, but by the time the train started up again the atmosphere between them was altered, they were cut off together in their corner.

It turned out he had a house in the Welsh countryside somewhere her geography was approximate; Robert would have known where it was. He had three daughters, two small ones, one from a first marriage, who didn't live with him and must be about fifteen, maybe sixteen.

How often do you see her?

Not often enough. We don't have anything to talk about when we do meet. I find her thoughts impenetrable. No doubt the feeling's mutual. My other girls are darlings, they're my heart's delight. And do you have children?

He looked at her ring.

Something impelled her not to answer him 'not yet' or simply 'no'.

I can't have them. We tried, but I can't.

I'm sorry. Should I be sorry? Are you?

She shrugged. I would have liked it. But there it is.

Might you think of adopting?

No.

OK.

It was a relief, to state the thing with such finality as if she made it exist as an object to contemplate, stony, with clean lines and hard edges. With the loss of her parents behind her, and the loss of the babies she might have had ahead, she was withdrawn out of the past and future into this moment of herself, like a barren island, or a sealed box. It was easier to lay out this truth for the stranger's penetrating scrutiny, and not in expectation of any kindness. The hawk beak of his interest jabbed at her, as it had at the poetry book.

They could lose one another at Paddington.

She was sitting forward at the table now, and he had fallen back into his seat. He was studying her, half-closing his eyes, as if to get her at a distance, in perspective.

So you're an English teacher. And what does your partner do? he asked.

He's a civil servant. Quite a high-up one.

Oh dear.

He's an intensely moral, conscientious man, and I love him dearly.

I can read it in your face, he said.

For a moment, ready to be enraged, she thought he intended a cheap irony; but no, he meant what he said, quite straight.

Really?

Yes, he's there in your expression, something settled and steadied.

That's nonsense. You wouldn't have known if I hadn't told you, you might have thought I was involved with an unstable drunk. Or someone who taught juggling skills. You can never guess other people's partners, they're almost always unexpected.

I'd never, ever, have believed you were involved with anyone with juggling skills, he promised her solemnly.

But an unstable drunk . . .

An unstable drunk, at a stretch. Though you wouldn't put up with him for long. You're not the martyred kind.

Cora didn't ask him about his wife, mother of the little girls, his heart's delight. That corrected the imbalance between them, where he was freighted down on his side with children.

He went to the buffet to get them both coffee. She commented that this was his second cup, and he agreed it probably wasn't good for him and he smoked too, he confessed, he ought to give that up. To her relief he didn't show much interest in these subjects; some of her colleagues could talk for hours about their diet regimes and health.