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Nick. You’re a married man.’
    ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Nick said, startled to hear his secret desires so baldly stated.
    ‘Women like Jennifer don’t miss a thing.’
    ‘Then you should hire her for Reuters.’
    ‘Love to, but she doesn’t drink enough.’ He raised his glass. ‘Good health,’ he said, with his usual flair for inverted prophesy.
     
     
     

CHAPTER 11
     
    They sat in the garden of a restaurant called Cina’s in wicker armchairs. The evening sun was dappled through the leaves of the lime trees that shaded the courtyard. The strings of coloured lights that hung in the trees gave the garden a fairytale appearance.
    It would have been peaceful if not for the shouts coming from the square outside. Another demonstration against the King.
    White-jacketed waiters scurried from table to table while patrons grabbed at their coat tails, demanding service.
    ‘Are you going to be gloomy again tonight?’ Jennifer said. ‘I do so hope you’re going to be better company tonight, you haven’t been yourself for weeks.’
    They had met in the summer of 1924, at a ball in the Savoy Hotel in the Strand. She was beautiful, well travelled, educated at Roedean. Her father was a diplomat and Nick’s ambition to join the service had met with her wholehearted approval.
    He had needed a wife, it was required for diplomatic advancement along with an Oxbridge classics degree. Jennifer was of an age that she was looking for a suitable husband and he supposed, looking back on it, that what had happened between them was inevitable.
    They made love for the first time a month before their wedding, in a beachfront hotel in Brighton. It was not all he had hoped, but he told himself it would get better.
    Jennifer fell pregnant quickly with Jamie; two years later Richard was born. Life seemed straightforward then. He was consumed with work, and if anyone had asked him then, he would have told them that a successful career and a stable home was all a man needed for contentment.
    When they had married, it had been for better or worse. He was twenty-three years old and had no idea what such words meant. He never imagined that the Nick Davis he knew would one day become such a different man.
    Early in his career his ambitions within the diplomatic service had been diverted to the more arcane pursuit of intelligence gathering. Soon there were postings to Lisbon and Madrid with the Passport Control Office, which was where his secret life began. His whole life was secrets now; secrets in the office, secrets at home.
    ‘Are you happy, Jen?’
    ‘Whatever do you mean?’
    ‘With me. With us.’
    ‘Of course I am,’ she said and he saw a flicker of apprehension in her eyes.
    A gypsy troupe in white blouses and velvet breeches started playing sad Oriental melodies in the Chinese kiosk in the centre of the garden.
    ‘Is this enough for you?’
    ‘Enough?’
    ‘Don’t you wish there was . . . some passion in our lives? That we spent more time together? That I talked to you more?’
    ‘I don’t think I follow you, Nick. What is it you want to talk about?’
    It occurred to him that she was happy with their marriage, that for all her complaints over the years, she actually wanted very little of him. Without her acquiescence, it would be quite impossible to end it. He knew he couldn’t be the one to walk away. He didn’t have enough reasons, there was no infidelity, no blistering arguments. And what about the boys?
    ‘I don’t think I’ve ever felt so unhappy,’ he said.
    ‘There’s a war on, as you’re so fond of telling people, Nick. No one’s happy.’
    He took a deep breath and tried again. ‘I’m unhappy ... about things with you and me.’
    ‘What are you saying?’
    ‘I’m saying . . . I’m saying have you ever thought that we would be happier apart?’
    There was a sudden welling of tears in her eyes. ‘No, Nick. No, I’ve never thought that.’
    They lapsed into