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confines that had so far dictated their lives. Athene shared his embryonic views that society was increasingly unimportant, that they could be pioneers, expressing themselves as they liked, doing what they liked, heedless of convention. He had to fit it all round his job on his father’s estate, but Athene was happy doing her own thing. She wasn’t terribly interested in doing up their new house – ‘The mothers are so good at that kind of thing’ – but she liked riding out on her new horse (his pre-wedding present to her), lying in front of the fire reading and, when he wasn’t working, going up to London for dances, to the cinema and, most of all, spending as much time as they could in bed.
    Douglas had not known it was possible to feel like this: he spent his days in a state of distracted tumescence, for the first time in his life unable to focus on work, the duties of family and career inheritance. Instead his antennae were tuned to a frequency of soft curves, flimsy fabrics and salty smells. Try as he might, he couldn’t seem to get inflamed by the things that had inspired him or fed his growing preoccupation with the wrongs of the ruling classes, and the vexed question of whether wealth redistribution meant that he should give up some of his land. Nothing was as relevant, as interesting as it had been. Not when it was compared to the carnal delights of his bride. Douglas, who had once confessed to his friends that he had never become more involved with a woman than he would with a new car (both, he had said, with the shallow confidence of youth, were best replaced within a year by a new model) now found himself sucked into a vortex of feeling in which there was no substitute for one particular person. The young man who had always maintained a sceptical distance from the messy doings of the full-blown love affair and prided himself on his skills as an impartial observer now found himself dragged into a vacuum of – well, what was it? Lust? Obsession? The words seemed somehow inadequate for the blind unthinkingness of it, the skin-upon-skin neediness of it, the gloriously greedy voluptuousness of it. The hard, thrusting—
    ‘Going to give the old girl a quickie?’
    ‘What?’ Douglas, flushing, stared at his father, who had appeared unannounced at his shoulder. His small wiry frame stood characteristically straight in his morning suit, his weatherbeaten, normally watchful face softened by alcohol and pride.
    ‘Your mother. You promised her a dance. She fancies a quick whirl if I can get them to strike up a quickstep. Got to meet your obligations, my boy. Your car will be here soon, after all.’
    ‘Oh. Right. Of course.’ Douglas stood, struggling to regroup his thoughts. ‘Athene, darling, will you excuse me?’
    ‘Only if your gorgeous father promises to give this old girl a quickie too.’ Her smile, flickering behind innocently wide eyes, made Douglas wince.
    ‘Delighted, my dear. Just don’t mind me if I wheel you past old Dickie Bentall a few times. I like to show him that there’s life in the old dog yet.’
    ‘I’m heading off, Mummy.’
    Serena Newton turned away from her wiener schnitzel (beautifully done, but she wasn’t sure about the creamed mushrooms) and looked with surprise at her daughter. ‘But you can’t leave until they’ve gone, darling. They’ve not even brought their car round yet.’
    ‘I promised Mrs Thesiger I’d babysit for her tonight. I want to go home first and get changed.’
    ‘But you never said. I thought you were coming home with Daddy and me.’
    ‘Not this weekend, Mummy. I promise I’ll be back in a week or two. It was lovely to see you.’
    Her mother’s cheek was soft and sweet and lightly powdered, the texture of marshmallow. She was wearing her sapphire earrings, the ones her father had bought in India, when they had been posted there in the early years of their marriage. He had ignored the advice of the gemstone cutter, she always said proudly,