anyway it was a detail. The accusation of adultery was true, and she was not going to deny it. The secret was out. All she wanted now was to retain some semblance of dignity.
She said: ‘I will tell you everything you want to know, Boy – but not in front of this leering slob.’
Boy raised his voice in astonishment. ‘So you don’t deny it?’
The people at the next table looked around, seemed embarrassed, and returned their attention to their drinks.
Daisy raised her own voice. ‘I refuse to be cross-examined in the bar of Claridge’s Hotel.’
‘You admit it, then?’ he shouted.
The room went quiet.
Daisy stood up. ‘I don’t admit or deny anything here. I’ll tell you everything in private at home, which is where civilized couples discuss such matters.’
‘My God, you did it, you slept with him!’ Boy roared.
Even the waiters had paused in their work and were standing still, watching the row.
Daisy walked to the door.
Boy yelled: ‘You slut!’
Daisy was not going to exit on that line. She turned around. ‘You know about sluts, of course. I had the misfortune to meet two of yours, remember?’ She looked around the room. ‘Joanie and Pearl,’ she said contemptuously. ‘How many wives would put up with that?’ She went out before he could reply.
She stepped into a waiting taxi. As it pulled away, she saw Boy emerge from the hotel and get into the next cab in line.
She gave the driver her address.
In a way she felt relieved that the truth was out. But she also felt terribly sad. Something had ended, she knew.
The house was only a quarter of a mile away. As she arrived, Boy’s taxi pulled up behind hers.
He followed her into the hall.
She could not stay here with him, she realized. That was over. She would never again share his home or his bed. ‘Bring me a suitcase, please,’ she said to the butler.
‘Very good, my lady.’
She looked around. It was an eighteenth-century town house of perfect proportions, with an elegantly curving staircase, but she was not really sorry to leave it.
Boy said: ‘Where are you going?’
‘To a hotel, I suppose. Probably not Claridge’s.’
‘To meet your lover!’
‘No, he’s overseas. But, yes, I do love him. I’m sorry, Boy. You have no right to judge me – your offences are worse – but I judge myself.’
‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘I’m going to divorce you.’
Those were the words she had been waiting for, she realized. Now they had been said, and everything was over. Her new life began from this moment.
She sighed. ‘Thank God,’ she said.
Daisy rented an apartment in Piccadilly. It had a large American-style bathroom with a shower. There were two separate toilets, one for guests – a ridiculous extravagance in the eyes of most English people.
Fortunately, money was not an issue for Daisy. Her grandfather Vyalov had left her rich, and she had had control of her own fortune since she was twenty-one. And it was all in American dollars.
New furniture was difficult to buy, so she shopped for antiques, of which there were plenty for sale cheap. She hung modern paintings for a gay, youthful look. She hired an elderly laundress and a girl to clean, and found it was easy to manage the place without a butler or a cook, especially when you did not have a husband to mollycoddle.
The servants at the Mayfair house packed all her clothes and sent them to her in a pantechnicon. Daisy and the laundress spent an afternoon opening the boxes and putting everything away tidily.
She had been both humiliated and liberated. On balance, she thought she was better off. The wound of rejection would heal, but she would be free of Boy for ever.
After a week she wondered what had been the results of the medical examination. The doctor would have reported to Boy, of course, as the husband. She did not want to ask him, and, anyway, it did not seem important any longer, so she forgot about it.
She enjoyed making a new home. For a couple of weeks she was too busy to socialize. When she had fixed up the apartment she decided to see all the friends she had been ignoring.
She had a lot of friends in London. She had been here seven years. For the last four years Boy had been away more than he was home, and she had gone to parties and balls on her own, so being
