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‘I’m only joking.’
    â€˜Well, you save your lousy jokes for the boys on the submarine.’
    But she put her arms round me and grabbed me tight. And she kissed me and stroked my face, trying to read her fortune in my eyes.
    I kissed her again. It was more like the real thing this time.
    â€˜I was beginning to wonder,’ she said, but the words were lost in my mouth.
    There was a pot of coffee clipped into an electric contraption that kept it warm for hours. I poured some into Marjorie’s cup and sipped it. It tasted like iron filings with a dash of quinine. I pulled a face.
    â€˜I’ll make more.’
    â€˜No.’ I grabbed her arm. She made me neurotic with all this tender loving care. ‘Sit down, for God’s sake sit down.’ I reached over and took a piece of the chocolate bar she’d been eating. ‘I don’t want anything to eat or drink.’
    The heroes on the box got the keys to a secret new aeroplane from this piggy-eyed Gestapo man, and this fat short-sighted sentry kept stamping and giving the Heil Hitler salute. The two English cats Heil Hitlered back, but they exchanged knowing smiles as they got in the plane.
    â€˜I don’t know why I’m watching it,’ said Marjorie.
    â€˜Seeing these films makes you wonder why we took six years to win that damned war,’ I said.
    â€˜Take off your overcoat.’
    â€˜I’m OK.’
    â€˜Have you been drinking, darling?’ She smiled. She’d never seen me drunk but she was always suspecting I might be.
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜You’re shivering.’
    I wanted to tell her about the flat and the photographs of the man who wasn’t me, but I knew she’d be sceptical. She was a doctor: they’re all like that. ‘Did the car give you trouble?’ she asked finally. She wanted only to be quite certain I wasn’t going to confess to another woman.
    â€˜The plugs. Same as last time.’
    â€˜Perhaps you should get the new one now, instead of waiting.’
    â€˜Sure. And a sixty-foot ocean racer. Did you see Jack while I was away?’
    â€˜He took me to lunch.’
    â€˜Good old Jack.’
    â€˜At the Savoy Grill.’
    I nodded. Her estranged husband was a fashionable young paediatrician. The Savoy Grill was his works canteen. ‘Did you talk about the divorce?’
    â€˜I told him I wanted no money.’
    â€˜That pleased him, I’ll bet.’
    â€˜Jack’s not like that.’
    â€˜What
is
he like, Marjorie?’
    She didn’t answer. We’d got as close as this to fighting about him before, but she was sensible enough to recognize male insecurity for what it was. She leaned forward and kissed my cheek. ‘You’re tired,’ she said.
    â€˜I missed you, Marj.’
    â€˜Did you really, darling?’
    I nodded. On the table alongside her there was a pile of books:
Pregnancy and Anaemia, Puerperal Anaemia
, Bennett,
Achresthic Anaemia
, Wilkinson,
A Clinical Study
, by Schmidt and
History of a Case of Anaemia
, by Combe. Tucked under the books there was a bundle of loose-leaf pages, crammed with Marjorie’s tiny writing. I broke the chocolate bar lying next to the books and put a piece of it into Marjorie’s mouth.
    â€˜The Los Angeles people came back to me. Now there’s a car and a house and a sabbatical fifth year.’
    â€˜I wasn’t …’
    â€˜Now don’t be tempted into lying. I know how your mind works.’
    â€˜I’m pretty tired, Marj.’
    â€˜Well, we’ll have to talk about things some time.’ It was the doctor speaking.
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜Lunch Thursday?’
    â€˜Great,’ I said.
    â€˜Sounds like it.’
    â€˜Sensational, wonderful, I can’t wait.’
    â€˜Sometimes I wonder how we got this far.’
    I didn’t answer. I wondered too. She wanted me to admit that I couldn’t live without her. And I had the nasty