Four

‘Well,’ said Linda, ‘I had no idea doubles could be so interesting!’

As Linda boiled the kettle and opened some biscuits she’d thoughtfully brought, Belinda found herself feeling spectacularly happy. What an intelligent and intuitive woman Linda was. Everyone else scanned the ceiling for flies when she talked about The Dualists, or fiddled with a dinner napkin. It had the same turn-off effect as Stefan telling people he came from Malmö or, indeed, from Scandinavia. In both situations, her mother would say, ‘That’s nice,’ then steer the conversation to the new range from Dolce and Gabbana. Linda, however, was of finer empathetic stuff. She had seen instantly not only that Belinda’s book urgently needed writing but that it needed writing well.

‘So do people meet their doubles in real life?’ Linda asked.

‘No. Not that I know of.’

‘Shame. Because, as you say, most of us are leading double lives, aren’t we?’

‘At least double, yes. Or we wish we had two lives, just to deal with everything.’

It felt odd to talk about it. Could Linda truly be interested?

‘So is it that one person is really two people? Or two people are really only one person?’

‘Both. The main thing in most doubles stories is that the hero has his life taken over by a dark, malevolent force that shares his identity and implicates him in misdeed. Or sometimes the double just gobbles him up. I’ve got lots of theories about it. That’s why I’m writing the book.’

Linda made the tea, as if it were perfectly normal to potter in Belinda’s kitchen. With airy confidence, she gave Belinda Stefan’s favourite mug, and opened a new packet of tea-bags because she didn’t know the system with the old brown jar.

‘Well, I think you’re right,’ Linda decided, putting the milk away in the fridge in the wrong place. ‘You mustn’t feel guilty about making time to write your special book. Our special work is what we’re put on earth to do. I firmly believe that.’

Belinda nodded. Should she ask what Linda’s special work was?

‘And, as you said before,’ Linda continued, ‘men have always shut themselves away to write books, without anyone accusing them of neglecting the household chores. I mean, Tolstoy didn’t write Crime and Punishment in between trips to Asda.’

‘You say the best things, Linda.’

‘Thank goodness you don’t have any children.’

‘Mm.’

Linda reopened the fridge and ran a professional eye over its contents. She took a deep breath. ‘I feel very good about this,’ she said, folding her arms. ‘I am absolutely sure that, between us, we’re going to write that book.’

Belinda looked at the new cleaning lady and marvelled. What a formidable ally to have. She had a silly schoolgirl urge to tell Linda she was lovely. She had such a fruity firmness about her, plus the easy elegance that is often found in people who, at a crucial moment in their teenage development, chose hockey club over Georgette Heyer. Paths divide at every moment of the day, of course. But Belinda believed in the universal hockey–Heyer divide most strongly. In her experience, those who at puberty chose solitary reading over group exertion may (oh, yes) have grown up to be brainboxes earning more money, but they could never quite catch up again in self-confidence with those hearty, practical girls, despite all their well-meant gym subscriptions in later years.

Outside in the hall, Mrs Holdsworth ran her Hoover into a coat-stand, and said, ‘Shit,’ as it crashed to the floor.

‘I can’t sack Mrs Holdsworth,’ Belinda said.

Linda shrugged. ‘I can leave her a patch of hall carpet. Where are the phones, by the way?’

‘What?’

‘The phones.’

‘One in my study, one in the hall.’

‘When I’m here, I’ll field your calls. Completely uninterrupted time is what you want, isn’t it? Shall I throw those newspapers away?’

Belinda nodded. It was like a dream.

‘Okey-dokey.’ Linda smiled. ‘Well, the best thing I can do this afternoon is get some shopping and prepare the dinner. I’ll give you a bill at the end of each week. You’re in tonight? What time does Mrs Holdsworth finish?’

‘Four.’

‘I’ll return at four ten. And I’ll finish at six thirty. What are you working on this afternoon?’

‘Oh, hack work. It has to be done. I write for money as Patsy Sullivan. Horsy stories. Patsy subsidizes us all. She’ll be paying you too.’

‘So you’ve got a double life yourself, Mrs Johansson!’

‘I ought to ditch Patsy, really. Now I’m on the same footing as Tolstoy it doesn’t seem right.’

‘Well, one thing at a time. Perhaps you’re fond of her.’

‘Oh, I am. Tell me about yourself, though, Linda.’

But just at that moment the phone rang, and Linda lifted down her coat (a neat ivory mac) from the kitchen door, where she had hung it on a little collapsible hanger. She folded the hanger and put it in her bag. ‘I’ll answer that on the way out,’ she said.

Belinda was startled. ‘What? I mean, you can’t—’

Mrs H yelled, ‘It’s your fucking phone, Belinda!’ above the din of the machine.

Linda gave her a funny look. ‘Trust me,’ she said.

Belinda’s mother regarded herself in her pocket mirror as the taxi bounced along the north side of Clapham Common. With effort and concentration, she twitched the corners of her mouth to form a ghostly smile. She would never actually regret the face-lift, but she had to admit that the general reaction was not what she had hoped for. Instead of her best friends saying, ‘Virginia, you look so good today, so young, but somehow I can’t put my finger on it,’ they walked right past her, even in Harrods Food Hall. To make matters worse, meanwhile, complete strangers were jabbing her in the chest, saying, ‘Do you mind me asking? How much it cost?’

It had cost thousands, of course. Cheekbone enhancement, lips like sofa cushions, realigned eyebrows, and a revolutionary polymer skin treatment guaranteed to keep the whole lot immovable for at least five years, as long as she took certain precautions. She could go swimming, she could be kissed on both cheeks, and she could sunbathe as long as she wore an enormous hat. ‘But if you feel at all tempted to peek inside a blast furnace,’ her surgeon told her darkly, ‘don’t.’

Lucky, then, that there were so few steel mills still under commission in Knightsbridge. Nevertheless she had taken this alarming advice very much to heart. At home, in her Primrose Hill flat, she’d stopped using the oven, and turned all the radiators down. The iron was permanently set to one-dot, and was used at arm’s length. Selling chestnuts on street corners was now totally ruled out as a profession. On the plus side, however, she had given up smoking. After decades of fruitless begging from Belinda, Mother had now kicked the habit overnight, and had even started decrying it in others. In fact, along with rabid jealousy of her facial upholstering, this was the main reason her old friends were dropping her. It gets on your nerves if every time you light up a Benson and Hedges, your companion shrieks, ‘No!’ and shades her face like Nosferatu. Auntie Vanessa, her identical twin sister (though not as identical as she used to be), was a champion smoker and now flatly refused to see her.

‘Hello?’

‘Belinda, darling! What a terrible line!’

‘This is the Johansson residence. Who is this speaking, please?’

Mother regarded her mobile phone with a puzzled expression, and knocked it against the car door a couple of times. ‘Belinda?’

‘I’m afraid Mrs Johansson is working at the moment. May I pass on a message?’

‘It’s her mother, for heaven’s sake. And I’m just on my way to see her.’ The taxi purred at traffic-lights. ‘Right here, then Armadale Road,’ she yelled, pointing.

Linda effortlessly took an executive decision. In fact she took two, because she bobbed down and unplugged Mrs H’s Hoover at the same time, leaving the old woman open-mouthed.

‘Oh, I’ve heard so much about you!’ she lied. ‘Mrs Johansson was just saying how much she’d like to see you. But she is so terribly busy today. I’ll ask her either to call you later or to give me a message for you. Did you have a nice day shopping?’

‘What?’

‘I very much look forward to meeting you. I’m Linda.’

She plugged the Hoover back in, and replaced the receiver.

‘You must be Mrs Holdsworth,’ she smiled, extending her manicured hand. ‘What a lovely scarf. Is it new?’

Jago spent his afternoon making secret calls to Dermot on his mobile from the gents’. He had no idea that the vile Dermot had been smooching with his wife the night before – or, indeed, that as he spoke to Dermot, mobile-to-mobile, he was in bed with her, showing her the extremely out-of-the-way places where his tan stopped.

Dermot, it has to be said, was more excited by the human clone in their midst than he’d been about making love to Viv – and, to Viv’s chagrin, did not try hard to disguise it. In fact he waved her away rather nastily, and she retreated to the en suite while he offered Jago his professional opinion – viz., that if Stefan were really a clone in our midst, Jago could get half a million for a book, plus serialization fees. However, if it turned out that Stefan was merely in our midst (and not a clone), he’d be lucky to get a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

‘You’re not an investigative reporter, Jago. Did you ever do anything like this before? What’s the nearest you’ve been to cutting-edge stuff?’

‘I interviewed Tom Stoppard when his marriage was breaking up.’

‘What did he say about it?’

‘About what?’

‘His love life.’

Jago’s voice rose. ‘You saying I should have asked him? Jesus, can you imagine how awkward that would be?’

Dermot didn’t have time for this. He sat up in bed and tucked a pillow behind him.

‘See what you can get, Jago. But you know how it is. You’ll need patience and perseverance and tact to get this story.’

Jago winced three times. He hated all those words.

‘My suggestion is, hire someone to watch him. Find out what happened in Sweden. And don’t get obsessed with the clone thing. Do you think Belinda knows she might be married to a clone?’

‘No.’

Dermot looked up at Viv, who was suddenly standing next to him. If she had overheard, there was nothing he could do about it.

‘Don’t tell her.’

‘You’re right. I mean, for one thing I don’t want to alarm my oldest friend unnecessarily. And on top of that—’

Dermot was there already. ‘She might get in first with a book deal?’

‘Exactly.’

Mrs Holdsworth finished Hoovering her little patch of hall and tottered to the kitchen for her coat. She pocketed the money Belinda had left her with an aggressive swipe, as if she would just as happily trample it underfoot. It had been an unsettling afternoon. Three times she had tried Belinda with conversational gambits of such outstanding ingenuity that she’d had to have a sit-down afterwards. But even ‘Do you think Richard Branson is really the Antichrist?’ and ‘Whatever made anyone invent the scone?’ failed to find their mark. And then, to top it all, this woman in the light mac had unplugged her Hoover.

In cleaning-lady terms, this was a direct challenge that cannot be overstated. It is the equivalent of the glove smacked across your face from right to left, and then from left to right.

From her ground-floor office, Belinda listened as Mrs Holdsworth left. She felt half guilty and half excited by the idea of hurting her feelings. She loved the sense of danger. What if Mrs Holdsworth told her off?

‘I’ll be off, then, Belinda,’ the old woman called. ‘We’re out of Jif.’

‘Right. Many thanks.’

‘Back next week.’

‘Mm.’

‘Did you know the other woman took a key?’

‘That’s OK.’

She heard the front door opened; felt the draught; heard traffic noise. Mrs H was evidently taking her time, deciding whether to pursue it. Then, with a muttered ‘Fuck it,’ the door was slammed, and Mrs H could faintly be heard coughing (‘God Almighty, Jesus wept’) at the garden gate.

Stefan was not expecting to meet his mother-in-law Virginia lurking behind a denuded London plane tree as he walked from the bus along Armadale Road. It was six thirty and dark, which didn’t help. And since she no longer looked remotely like the woman he knew as Mother, he walked straight past her, consulting a little book and talking to himself. ‘Make it snappy or make tracks,’ she heard him saying. ‘You have made a hole in my pocket but I won’t make a song and dance. How do you make that out exactly? Ha! That makes you sit up, for sure.’

‘Stefan!’ she called. She had always liked Stefan, because he was big and handsome; and he had always liked her, too. The reason they saw Mother so infrequently was only that Belinda was discouraged by criticism, and Mother, unfortunately, had no other mode of communication.

He turned. ‘Let’s make a night of it, baby,’ he said. ‘Oh, hello, Virginia. Didn’t recognize you. Something up?’

Mother’s permanently fixed expression of wide-eyed alarm often gave rise to this question. But on this occasion at least the context made it the right thing to say.

‘I had to see you,’ she said. ‘Who’s Linda? What’s going on?’

Stefan’s eyes swivelled. ‘I don’t understand. Why are you out here in the street? Has there been dirty work at the crossroads?’

Mother pursed her lips. Or, more accurately, she attempted to purse her lips but gave up.

‘Yes, I rather think there has,’ she said at last. ‘I wanted to invite Belinda to the opera tonight. This Linda refused to let me.’

‘Really? She sent you away from the door, like a dog in the night?’

‘I phoned. They wouldn’t let me in, Stefan.’ She pouted. ‘I’ve been out here in the cold. It was someone called Linda and she was very rude. Typical of Belinda to hire somebody who’d be rude to her mother.’

At which point, as they approached the front door, Linda opened it and smiled at them both. She was evidently just leaving, but when she saw them she ushered them inside, gesturing at them to keep the noise down.

‘Mrs Johansson is working until seven,’ she whispered. ‘The dinner will be ready at seven thirty. I’ve rigged up a temporary answering-machine, made a list of the more urgent bills, filed the letters, cleaned the kitchen windows, sprayed the cat for fleas and changed all the beds.’

‘Linda is our new Mrs Mop,’ Stefan explained, somewhat redundantly.

‘The newspapers I took to the dump,’ Linda continued, ‘but I’ve rung the recycling people and they’ll start coming next Tuesday. Um, what else? Your dressing-gown is warming in the airing cupboard, Mr Johansson. I didn’t know what to do with this ice-hockey puck, but I can ask Mrs Johansson at our three o’clock meeting tomorrow. Normally our meeting will be at one o’clock, when I’ll provide soup and a hot dish, but tomorrow I’ll be a little late, as I’ll be having lunch with Mrs Johansson’s agent on her behalf.’

A number of objections raised themselves in the minds of Stefan and Mother, but under this barrage all they could do was laugh nervously.

‘Does Belinda know all this?’

Linda was surprised. ‘Of course not. That’s the idea.’

Stefan ran through the list again in his mind. He frowned. ‘I think the cat was not ours, Linda. We do not own a cat. I fear you have de-fleaed the cat of another.’

Mother made a strangled noise. ‘The cat of another?’ she exploded. ‘Who cares about the cat of another? I’ve never heard anything like it. This is so typical of Belinda. Having lunch with Jorkin? How dare you?’

Linda looked puzzled. ‘I am thinking only of what’s best for Mrs Johansson, and for everybody. Truly, I’m very good at this sort of thing. One of my previous employers said I was like Nature. I abhor a vacuum. Meanwhile, as I’m sure you’re aware, Mrs Johansson has fears that she will cease to be before her pen has gleaned her teeming brain.’

Mother tried to look aghast, but (of course) continued only to look mildly surprised. In any case, it was hard to have a proper scene huddled by the front door, talking in hushed tones for fear of interrupting the sacred work of Belinda.

‘I don’t believe it,’ she hissed. ‘This house! This is so typical! You waltz in here. You just waltz—’

Mother, breathless with exasperation, seemed to be getting stuck on the insufferable image of Linda waltzing. ‘I mean, here’s an idea, Linda, whoever you are,’ she spat. ‘If you’re doing everything for my daughter, why don’t you just come to see Così Fan Tutte with me tonight, then sleep with Stefan afterwards?’

‘Virginia!’ exclaimed Stefan. English sarcasm always outraged him.

But Linda had her head on one side, as if making her mind up. ‘Would you stay there, please?’ she said, and disappeared in the direction of Belinda’s study. They waited awkwardly by the front door, like neighbourhood children waiting for a friend to come out to play.

Linda returned. ‘I’d love to,’ she said. ‘I mean, I’d love to come to the opera in Belinda’s place. She’s happy to carry on working, and she said it would be a good opportunity for me to get to know you. She also said you know perfectly well she hates poncy opera. So thank you, thank you very much. Is that a Prada coat? I thought so. Look at the tailoring.’

She attempted to give Mother a kiss on the cheek, but was almost shoved away. ‘Poncy?’ Mother queried, obviously hurt. ‘Belinda!’ she called.

Stefan intervened. ‘If the ticket is spare, Virginia, why not take Linda? She takes us by surprise, yet it is a swell idea. Here is a vacuum for her to fill, I think. Surely we should give her the glad hand for the kitchen windows and such. Only the cat of another has the right to bad feeling.’

‘May I call you Virginia?’ asked Linda, with a smile.

‘Of course not.’

Mother was beginning to feel dizzy.

‘You must come to dinner tomorrow night, mustn’t she, Mr Johansson? I happen to know Belinda’s aiming to finish her chapter on Dostoevsky this week, and she’ll be so relieved to know she needn’t do anything.’

‘Poncy?’ Mother repeated. ‘Così isn’t poncy.’

Linda waved it away. ‘May I call you Mother?’

‘No.’

‘Well, this is very exciting. Do I need to change first, do you think? Or shall I come as I am?’

Back in her flat, Maggie stroked Ariel and Miranda in the dark, and tried to imagine how she would tell Belinda what had happened. Belinda ought to be informed about a real-life case of doubles, surely? But, on the other hand, the vocabulary was so difficult. ‘I met a double’ would sound like she’d met her own double; ‘I met two doubles’ sounded like she’d met four people, possibly dressed in tennis whites, which was in no way a reflection of what had happened.

If only she had a contact number for Leon! If only she had listened more carefully when he told her the details of his next indie-car yawnfest assignment in Oshbosh, Oklahoma. ‘Off to Oshbosh,’ said his note. ‘You were lovely. I want to see you again. Yours anally, L.’ She couldn’t possibly ask Jago about him: it was imperative that her friends never find out the calibre of person she allowed herself to sleep with. But, there again, Leon’s presence was desperately required, simply to prove to her bloody therapist that she hadn’t made him up.

Olivia in Twelfth Night, she reflected, had had such an easy time of it by comparison. ‘Honestly, you look exactly like him,’ she had lamely told Noel, Julia’s husband, in the café, when he’d revived her. But he only nodded solemnly and exchanged professional tut-tut glances with Julia. He was a therapist too, naturally. Neither of them believed her. It was a nightmare. They wanted to know why she’d identified herself as Penelope Pitstop, but since neither of them had a sense of humour or had watched children’s television, it had been necessary to abandon the explanation.

‘Margaret won’t mind me telling you,’ Julia was informing Noel now. ‘We’ve been working for several months on a specific complex, relating to her feelings of invisibility. Her greatest fear – I think this is true, Margaret? – is of being publicly ignored and rejected by people who’ve been intimate with her. I think we agreed that of all humiliations this one utterly annihilates you, doesn’t it, Margaret?’

Maggie nodded reluctantly, horrified that Julia should discuss this with somebody else. Julia lowered her voice. ‘We think it’s probably to do with her father.’

Noel looked impressed by this discovery. ‘The father is so often the cause,’ he agreed. ‘And today that fear was projected on to me? Tch, I’m so sorry I hurt you that way, Margaret.’

‘It wasn’t your fault,’ insisted Maggie. ‘And it wasn’t anything to do with projecting. It’s just that you look exactly like the man I slept with last night. It was a case of mistaken identity, that’s all.’

‘I know,’ said Noel.

‘I know,’ echoed Julia, and automatically offered Maggie a packet of tissues from her bag. Likewise automatically, Maggie took one. She shoved it up the sleeve of her jumper.

‘You do,’ she insisted, and waggled her hands.

‘Yes, yes,’ said Noel, thoughtfully. ‘I’ll tell you what, Margaret. Can I call you Margaret?’

‘You already have.’

‘Well, Margaret.’ Noel rested his chin in his hands. ‘I’m struck by an idea here. It’s pretty revolutionary, I warn you. But why don’t we all work together on this? I happen to be an expert on therapeutic role-playing. For therapeutic purposes, and under the strictest ethical controls, I could take the role of this man, this – Leon?’

‘Yes, Leon.’

‘And – well, I’m just feeling my way here, of course – but I could be Leon and, um, well, recognize you. Why not take advantage of the fact that you see a resemblance? I could recognize you and respond to you, and make you feel better. Sometimes I wouldn’t recognize you, and you could hit me. Although only under the strictest ethical doo-dahs and whatsits, et cetera. What do you think?’

‘I don’t know. To be honest, I was thinking of leaving therapy altogether.’

Noel and Julia both gasped.

‘The thing is,’ she continued, ‘I spend so much time talking about my life, I feel I’m not actually living it.’

The therapists swapped glances.

‘All the more reason to continue with therapy, but step it up, add another dimension,’ Julia advised, quickly.

‘Really?’

‘Oh, yes.’

They watched her as she wavered. Noel coughed. ‘I’ll come clean with you, Margaret. I think you have a very serious problem.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. Ignoring this problem is simply not a choice you have. No, you can either solve this problem through years of analysing it, or you can confront it and blow it out of the water. Tease it out slowly, or blitz it. Well, I think I know you well enough to know which course you’d prefer.’

‘You don’t know me at all,’ Maggie pointed out, reasonably.

‘Margaret, your hostility and defensiveness are all part of your problem.’

‘That’s true,’ said Julia. ‘You resist intimacy, even with me.’

Maggie wanted to hit her. She wanted to hit him, too. The café would be closing at half past two, and she still hadn’t had her bacon sandwich.

‘Look. I’m sorry. But the point is, you’re the lady I pay to help me sort out a problem, and you’re a man who just happens to look exactly like the man I slept with last night. I didn’t like him, and to be honest, I’m not warming much to you, either.’

Julia shook her head and sighed.

‘No, it’s OK,’ Noel told her. ‘I can work with that. Let’s say I’m the man you slept with last night, Margaret. See? I’m Leon. Nyow-nyow, and here comes Michael Schumacher in the Renault. First things first. Was I any good in bed?’

‘You were terrible.’

‘OK,’ he said again, with slightly less enthusiasm. ‘I can work with that, too.’

‘No,’ she relented. ‘You were nice. I’m a bitch. I mean, he was nice. What am I saying?’

A man came to collect their cups. ‘Michael Schumacher drives a Ferrari,’ he observed. ‘As a point of fact.’

‘I didn’t say this was going to be easy,’ snapped Noel. ‘I just said it was the best way to stop this lovely young woman spiralling into madness.’

At which the man pronounced the Gemini closed.

Sitting here in the dark now, Maggie realized Miranda and Ariel were practising that special cat alarmed expression, which says, ‘Who the hell are you? Am I in the wrong house? My God, I’m getting out of here.’ It didn’t help. She got up and brushed them off her lap.

This is all bloody Leon’s fault, she thought. Bloody, bloody Leon.

When Jago returned from the office at nine that evening, he said nothing about Stefan being a clone. He just brought home with him five books by Laurie Spink, four by Steve Jones and two by Richard Dawkins. It was clear that his efforts to absorb and enjoy these books had defeated him. He looked tired and miserable, as though he’d been wrestling feebly with a muscular opponent who’d not only held him by the wrists but had laughed at him. The minute he was indoors he made a tall pile of the books in the hall and kicked them against a door. Viv heard the noise and rushed in. ‘Special supplement on genetics,’ he explained, waving a hand at the scattered, broken-backed volumes. He wore a wounded expression. ‘Do you think Melvyn Bragg really understands any of this?’ he cried. ‘Because I’m fucked if I do.’

Viv watched sympathetically as he retrieved the books and showed them to her, one by one. He was almost in tears. ‘Look at this. “Winner of the Easy-peasy Book Prize”,’ he pretended to read from the cover of one. ‘“Best popular science book of 1995, a million copies sold to babes in arms”,’ he snarled. ‘Pah! Look. “I couldn’t put it down – Sooty”.’

Viv wondered whether he was going to confide his theory about Stefan, but it looked as if he wasn’t. Since she could hardly explain how she happened to know already, she would just have to wait until he told her, and then act surprised.

‘Why don’t you phone Stefan if you want to know about genetics?’ she said, therefore. ‘He knows all about it.’

‘Oh yeah, very funny,’ snapped Jago.

‘Why?’

Caught out, Jago bit his lip and thought fast. ‘Someone from the letters desk said Richard Branson is the Antichrist today. Can you believe that? The things people will say.’

‘Mm,’ said Viv. As they made their way to the kitchen, she hoped she was better at lying than her husband was. Jago was not only sweaty and jumpy but an obituary of Stefan was sticking out of his pocket, and he’d brought home a copy of a sensational American weekly paper, opened at the page ‘Ten Ways to Tell if Your Grandparent is a Clone’.

‘I think Linda’s defected,’ said Viv.

‘Shame,’ said Jago, who didn’t care. He had poured himself a drink. ‘Listen to this,’ he said. ‘“Ten ways to tell if your grandparent is a clone. One. Sleeps fewer hours than you do. Two. Sometimes gets confused about things that happened relatively recently, yet claims to have personal memories of the Second World War. Three—” Do you think this is on the level?’

‘I was talking about Linda,’ insisted Viv. ‘She said she’d still come on Thursday, but I feel she’s gone. So you need to know the consequences.’

Jago nodded. He wasn’t listening.

‘Ten ways to tell that your wife is inconsolably upset,’ Viv persisted. ‘One. She doesn’t speak to her oldest friend Belinda ever again. Two. She resigns her job at the hospital.’

‘Three?’ he said automatically, then looked up. ‘What?’ he said. ‘You resigned your job?’

‘I rang them today. I’ve resigned. I’m not going back.’

‘Don’t you think that’s a little extreme? We could replace Linda, for heaven’s sake.’

Viv laughed. ‘I doubt it.’

Jago put down his weekly paper and coughed. ‘Viv, I’ve got something to tell you,’ he said. ‘I came home one day when Linda was supposed to be here, and I saw you putting the washing out when you should have been at work.’

‘So?’

‘So, I never thought Linda really did much, and I’m glad she’s gone. I think she had some kind of a hold over you.’

Viv was stricken. It was true. Life had been much simpler before Linda came along and streamlined it. But she felt no duty to tell Jago the full story, because Jago had cheerfully never absorbed a full story in his life. Even at undergraduate level, he was only really interested in headlines. ‘Blind Puritan Pens Mega Poem’ was his level, mostly. ‘Queen Is Faerie Shock.’ When she’d first needed to tell him she was pregnant, she’d left him a note with ‘Wife Up Duff Blunder’ on it. And when Stefan announced his engagement to Belinda, she’d wrestled for hours with variants of ‘Norwegian Wooed’ before admitting to herself it would never quite come right.

‘“Char In Mystery Job Whammy”,’ she said, for his benefit, now. ‘“‘I Never Knew,’ Says Husband.”’

At ten thirty, as Belinda and Stefan snuggled on the sofa, the phone rang. It was Virginia. Stefan answered it and came back.

‘Your mother wanted to let us know she’d had a rattling good time at the opera with Linda,’ he reported, pouring his wife the last of the wine. ‘She said Linda was very appreciative and attentive and didn’t keep telling her what to think of it, like some people she could mention.’

‘Oh,’ said Belinda. ‘Well, that’s good.’

‘She also said it was nice to go out with someone who didn’t keep squirming in their seat.’

‘That’s my mother.’

Stefan looked at her. ‘You don’t mind?’

Belinda laughed. ‘Mind what?’

‘Being compared like that? Are you sure? As sure as eggs is eggs?’

‘Why would I want to spend an evening with Mother when I could be here with you? Thank you very much, Linda. That’s what I say. What a star.’

They snuggled together again.

‘Some people would be jealous, that’s all. Ingrid was a jealous person. And you are jealous of Viv sometimes, I think.’

‘I’ll tell you the only time I feel really jealous,’ said Belinda, putting her hand under Stefan’s shirt and stroking his skin. ‘It’s when I think of Ingrid. Or when you look at Maggie, or Maggie looks at you. I saw her whisper to you last night and I got hot and raw and murderous, and I felt sick. That’s when I feel jealous.’

Like most people, Stefan was both pleased and apprehensive at the idea that his loving partner would kill to keep him true.

‘That was a dandy meal Linda made. Sea bass. It’s a crying shame you couldn’t have it. You will have to tell her you think fish is strictly for the birds.’

‘Yes. But anyone who does what she does – well, you’ve got to make a few allowances. Did you hear about next door’s cat?’

‘I did.’

‘She’s going to be amazing. She’s having lunch with Jorkin for me tomorrow.’

‘You know about that?’

‘I overheard.’

‘You don’t mind about that either?’

‘Oh, Stefan, why should I mind? I loathe Jorkin, he never has any decent ideas, and the extra time not having lunch with him means I can get on with the masterwork. I think it’s marvellous.’

‘I would lay down the law, if it were me. And stop the rot.’

‘Mm.’ Belinda shrugged.

‘I mean, who is this Linda? Was she born under a gooseberry bush? You entrust her to run our lives, and bake my dressing-gown in the airing cupboard, and question me about my moose-hat, and make sea bass without asking – and all I know is that she tell me she’s like Nature, she abhors a vacuum.’

‘Is that what she said?’ said Belinda, evidently pleased by the idea. ‘Honestly, Stefan, don’t take it so seriously. It’s all in a good cause. The way I see it, if she really does abhor a vacuum, that’s marvellous news.’

‘And she can always use a dustpan and brush,’ said Stefan, solemnly, before breaking into a proud grin. ‘Which is a good yoke, I think.’

Belinda kissed him. ‘What is it you used to call me?’ she asked, teasingly.

‘I used to call you, um, “Come to bed, Miss Patch”.’

‘I can’t believe I let you get away with that.’

‘No. Sometimes neither can I.’