permanently on both sides of the streets. Only purpose-built places, like my block of flats, had adequate parking, except for two or three larger houses converted to flats which had cars where once there had been lawns.
I drove on past my home down the narrow roadway and twirled fast into the driveway of one of the large houses opposite. That particular house had a narrow exit drive also into the next tree- lined avenue: I drove straight through fast, turned quickly, raced round two more corners and returned to my own road to come up behind the car which had been following me.
He was there, stopped, awkwardly half-parked in too small a space with his nose to the kerb, rear sticking out, brake lights still shining: indecision showing all over the place. I drew to a halt right behind him, blocking his retreat, put on my brakes, climbed out, took three or four swift strides and opened the door on the driver's side.
There was a stark moment of silence.
Then I said, 'Well, well, well,' and after that I nodded up towards my flat and said, 'Come on in,' and after that I said, 'If I'd known you were coming, I'd have baked a cake.'
Debs giggled. Ferdinand, who had been driving, looked sheepish. Serena, unrepentant, said, 'Is Daddy here?'
They came up to my flat where they could see pretty clearly that no, Daddy wasn't. Ferdinand looked down from the sitting-room window to where his car was now parked beside mine in neat privacy, and then up at the backs of houses opposite over a nearby fence.
'Not much of a view,' he said disparagingly.
'I'm not here much.'
'You knew I was following you, didn't you?'
'Yes,' I said. 'Like a drink?'
'Well… scotch?'
I nodded and poured him some from a bottle in the cupboard.
'No ice,' he said, taking the glass. 'After that drive, I'll take it neat.'
'I didn't go fast,' I said, surprised.
'Your idea of fast and mine round those goddam twisty roads are about ten miles an hour different.'
The two girls were poking about in the kitchen and bedrooms and I could hear someone, Serena no doubt, opening doors and drawers in a search for residues of Malcolm.
Ferdinand shrugged, seeing my unconcern. 'He hasn't been here at all, has he?' he said.
'Not for three years.'
'Where is he?'
I didn't answer.
'We'll have to torture you into telling,' said Ferdinand.
It was a frivolous threat we'd used often in our childhood for anything from 'Where are the corn flakes to 'What is the time' and Ferdinand himself looked surprised that it had surfaced.
'Mm,' I said. 'As in the tool shed?'
'Shit,' Ferdinand said. 'I didn't mean…'
'I should absolutely hope not.'
We both remembered, though, the rainy afternoon when Gervase had put the threat into operation, trying to make me tell him where I'd hidden my new cricket bat which he coveted. I hadn't told him, out of cussed ness Ferdinand had been there, too frightened of Gervase to protest, and also Serena, barely four, wide-eyed and uncomprehending.
'I thought you'd forgotten,' Ferdinand said. 'You've never mentioned it.'
'Boys will be bullies.'
'Gervase still is.'
Which of us, I thought, was not as we had been in the green garden? Donald, Lucy, Thomas, Gervase, Ferdinand, Serena – all Playing there long ago, children's voices calling through the bushes, the adults we would become already forming in the gangling limbs, smooth faces, groping minds. None of those children… none of us… I thought protestingly, could have killed.
Serena came into the sitting-room carrying a white lace negligee and looking oddly shocked. 'You've had a woman here!' she said.
'There's no law against it.'
Debs, following her, showed a more normal reaction. 'Size ten, good perfume, expensive tastes, classy lady,' she said. 'How am I doing?'
'Not bad.'
'Her face cream's in the bathroom,' Serena said. 'You didn't tell us you had a… a…'
'Girl-friend,' I said. 'And do you have… a boy-friend?'
She made an involuntary face of distaste and shook her head. Debs put a sisterly arm round Serena's shoulders and said, 'I keep telling her to go to a sex therapist or she'll end up a dry old stick, but she won't listen, will you love?'
Serena wriggled free of Debs' arm and strode off with the negligee towards the bedrooms.
'Has anyone ever assaulted her?' I asked Ferdinand. 'She has that look.'
'Not that I know of.' He raised his eyebrows. 'She's never said so.'
'She's just scared of sex,' Debs said blithely. 'You wouldn't think anyone would be, these days. Ferdinand's not, are you, bunny?'
Ferdinand didn't react, but said, 'We've finished here, I think.' He drained his scotch, put down his glass and gave me a cold stare as if to announce that any semi-thaw I might have perceived during the afternoon's exchanges was now at an end. The ice-curtain had come down again with a clang. 'if you cut us out with Malcolm,' he said, 'you'll live to regret it.'
Hurt, despite myself, and with a touch of acid, I asked, 'Is that again what Alicia says?'
'Damn you, Ian,' he said angrily, and made for the door, calling, 'Serena, we're going,' giving her no choice but to follow.
Debs gave me a mock gruesome look as she went in their wake. 'You're Alicia's number one villain, too bad, lovey. You keep your hooks off Malcolm's money or you won't know what hit you.' There was a fierce last-minute threat in her final words, and I saw, as the jokey manner slipped, that it was merely a facade which hid the same fears and furies of all the others, and her eyes, as she went, were just as unfriendly.
With regret, I watched from the window as the three of them climbed into Ferdinand's car and drove away. It was an illusion to think one could go back to the uncorrupted emotions of childhood, and I would have to stop wishing for it. I turned away, rinsed out Ferdinand's glass, and went into my bedroom to see how Serena had left it.
The white negligee was lying on my bed. I picked it up and hung it in its cupboard, rubbing my cheek in the fabric and smelling the faint sweet scent of the lady who came occasionally for lighthearted interludes away from a husband who was all but impotent but nevertheless loved. We suited each other well: perfectly happy in ephemeral passion, with no intention of commitment.
I checked round the flat, opened a few letters and listened to the answering machine: there was nothing of note. I spent a while thinking about cars. I had arranged on the telephone two days earlier that the hotel in Cambridge would allow my own car to remain in their park for a daily fee until I collected it, but I couldn't leave it there for ever. If I took a taxi to Epsom station, I thought, I could go up to London by train. In the morning, I would go by train to Cambridge, fetch my car, drive back to the flat, change to the hired car and drive that back to London. It might even be a shade safer, I thought, considering that Ferdinand, and through him the others, would know its colour, make and number, to turn that car in and hire a different one.
The telephone rang. I picked up the receiver and heard a familiar voice, warm and husky, coming to the point without delay. 'How about now?' she said. 'We could have an hour.'
I could seldom resist her. Seldom tried. 'An hour would be great. I was just thinking of you.'
'Good,' she said. 'See you.'
I stopped worrying about cars and thought of the white lace negligee instead; more enticing altogether. I put two wine glasses on the table by the sofa and looked at my watch. Malcolm would scarcely have reached the Savoy, I thought, but it was worth a try; and in fact he picked up the telephone saying he had that minute walked
