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wildness that whirls the dancers past the gaze of shocked onlookers; had fallen deeper and deeper and had soared higher and higher, into a single reality — the dazzling explosion into self.
    What lies are impossible? What trust is so precious? What responsibility is so great that it could deny this single chance in eternity to exist? Alas for me, and for all who knew me, the answer was … none.
    To be brought into being by another, as I was by Anna, leads to strange, unthought-of needs. Breathing became more difficult without her. I literally felt I was being born. And because birth is always violent, I never looked for, nor ever found, gentleness.
    The outer reaches of our being are arrived at through violence. Pain turns into ecstasy. A glance turns into a threat. A challenge deep behind the eye or mouth, that only Anna or I could understand, led us on and on, intoxicated by the power to create our own magnificent universe.
    She never cried out. Patiently she suffered the slow torments of my adoration. Sometimes, her limbs locked, impossibly angled, as on a rack of my imagination, stoically she bore my weight. Dark-eyed, mother-like, the timeless creator of the thing that hurt her.

F OURTEEN
    ‘I MAY HAVE TO go to Brussels on Friday.’ Ingrid and I were having a pre-dinner drink in the drawing-room.
    ‘Oh, no! Why? I hoped we could go to Hartley to see Father. I felt like a nice peaceful weekend in the country. I thought you might have been able to come up, on Sunday at least.’ Ingrid sounded pained.
    ‘I’m sorry, really sorry. I’d have liked to go to Hartley. But there’s an absolutely key meeting I’ve got to get to. And while I’m there, George Broughton has arranged two lunches. And a dinner. With our Dutch counterparts. You go to Hartley. You and Edward always have such a nice time together. I don’t know of a father and daughter who are closer.’
    Ingrid laughed. She and Edward really did have the most extraordinary ease with each other. I often felt like an outsider. And Hartley was beautiful. Edward had bought it early in his career and taken his young bride to live there.
    ‘I’ll ask Sally if she can come.’
    ‘That’s a good idea.’
    ‘Maybe she can bring this new boyfriend. I don’t know if it’s serious. He’s quite a nice chap. Nick Robinson’s son.’
    ‘How did she meet him?’
    ‘He’s an assistant producer at the television company.’ Sally had recently left publishing to work in television.
    ‘Well, Nick’s a gentleman. Ask Sally and her chap. You’ll all have a wonderful time.’
    ‘Martyn is going to Paris, of course, with Anna. God, that’s looking more and more serious.’
    My back was to her.
    ‘Where are they staying?’
    ‘Oh, at some place Anna knows. Frightfully expensive and very trendy, I gather. L’Hôtel. Yes, I think that’s what it’s called.’
    I drank my whisky. So easy, so easy. Anna had refused to tell me. I hadn’t spoken to Martyn for a week.
    ‘Anna has money, you know.’ Ingrid spoke disapprovingly.
    ‘Has she?’
    ‘It’s quite a lot evidently. Left to her by her grandfather, I gather. That’s how she can afford that mews house she lives in, and her very expensive car.’
    ‘Well, Martyn’s not exactly penniless. And he’s got the trust fund set up by my father and Edward.’
    ‘Yes I know. But Anna’s the kind of girl who would have been better off without money.’
    ‘What on earth do you mean?’
    ‘Money does things to a woman.’
    ‘Really. What? And don’t forget you had a lot of money when we married.’
    ‘Ah, but I’m not Anna. Whatever people say nowadays, marriage requires a woman to at least act out a certain kind of dependence. Money is sometimes the currency of that dependence. In a subtle woman, her economic independence is shaded, possibly hidden altogether.’ She had the grace to laugh. ‘Seriously, that girl has a fierce nature.’
    ‘I don’t know why we keep calling her a girl. She’s a woman