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melodramatic. Perhaps, as you say, the letter got posted by accident. Anyway, we heard nothing more and gradually the thing drifted away.'
    'So why are we discussing it now?'
    He did not answer me immediately. Instead, he stood up and crossed to the chimneypiece. A log had rolled forward on to the hearth and he took up the tools to rectify it, doing so with a kind of deadly intensity. 'The thing is,' he said at last, speaking into the flames but presumably addressing me, 'I want to find the child.'
    There didn't seem to be any logic in this. If he'd wanted to 'do the right thing,' why hadn't he done it eighteen years before, when there might have been some point? 'Isn't it a bit late?' I asked. 'It wouldn't have been easy to play dad when she wrote the letter; but by now the "child" is a man or woman in their late thirties. They are what they are, and it's far too late to help shape them now.'
    None of this seemed to carry any weight whatever. I'm not sure he even heard. 'I want to find them,' he repeated. 'I want you to find them.'
    It would be foolish to pretend that I had not by this stage worked out that this was where we were headed. But it was not a task I relished. Nor was I in the least sure I would undertake it. 'Why me?'
    'When I met you I had only slept with four girls.' He paused. I raised my eyebrows faintly. Any man of my generation will understand that this was impressive in itself. At nineteen, which is what we were when we first came across each other, I do not believe I had done much more than kiss on the dance floor. He hadn't finished. 'I knew all four until well into the early 1970s and it definitely wasn't one of them. Then you and I ran around for a while, and I kept myself fairly busy. A couple of years later, when that period had come to an end, we went to Portugal. And after that I was sterile. Besides, look at the writing, look at the paper, read the phrases. This woman is educated--'
    'And histrionic. And drunk.'
    'Which does not prevent her being posh.'
    'I'll say.' I considered his theory some more. 'What about the years between the end of the Season and Portugal?'
    He shook his head. 'A few, mainly scrubbers, and a couple left over from our times together. Not one who had a baby before that summer.' He sighed wearily. 'Anyway, nobody lives a lie who hasn't got something to lose. Something worth holding on to, something that would be endangered by the truth. She wrote to me in 1990 when the upper and upper middle classes occupied the last remaining bastion of legitimate birth. Anyone normal would have let the secret out of the bag long ago.' The effort of saying all this, plus the log work, had depleted what remained of his energy and he sank back into his chair with a groan.
    I did not pity him. Quite the contrary. Suddenly the unreasonableness of his request struck me forcibly. 'But I'm not in your life. I am nothing to do with you. We are completely different people.' I wasn't insulting him. I simply could not see why any of this was my responsibility. 'We may have known each other once, but we don't now. We went to some dances together forty years ago. And quarrelled. There must be others who are far closer to you than I ever was. I can't be the only person who could take this on.'
    'But you are. These women came from your people, not mine. I have no other friends who would know them, or even know of them. And in fact, if we are having this conversation, I have no other friends.'
    This was too self-serving for my taste. 'Then you have no friends at all, because you certainly can't count me.' Naturally, once the words were out I rather regretted them. I did believe that he was dying and there was no point in punishing him now for things that could never be undone, whatever he or I might wish.
    But he smiled. 'You're right. I have no friends. As you know better than most, it's not a relationship I could ever either understand or manage. If you will not do this for me I have no one else to ask. I