"Yes," he said dryly, "and I nearly pulled every muscle in my body. I couldn't concentrate on anything except you. You looked so cute in your gym clothes."

"Oh," I said, thrilled, snuggling up closer to him.

At about half past one I said, "I'd better go home."

"Oh no," he said, wrapping his arms and legs tightly around me. "I won't let you. I'm going to keep you chained in here. You're going to be my sex slave."

"Adam," I said, sighing, "you say the nicest things."

After a little while longer, I said, reluctantly, "I'd really better go."

"If you really have to," he said.

"You know I do."

"Would you stay if it wasn't for Kate?"

"Yes."

He sat up in bed and watched me as I got dressed.

I looked up from doing up the buttons on my dress to find him smiling at me, but smiling in a sad kind of way.

"Is something wrong?" I asked.

"You're always running away from me," he said.

"Adam, I'm not," I said indignantly. "I have to go."

"Sorry," he said, giving me a real smile this time.

He hopped out of bed and said, "I'll come down to the door with you."

251

"Not without any clothes, you won't," I said. "What if passersby see?"

There was no doubt.

I was my mother's daughter.

He kissed me lingeringly at the front door.

And it was quite an achievement that I left at all.

"Stay," he murmured against my hair.

"I can't," I told him sternly, although I felt like going straight back up the stairs and getting back into bed with him.

"I'll call you tomorrow," he said.

"Bye."

Another kiss.

Further persuasion.

Stalwart resistance from me.

Reluctant letting go.

I finally made it to the car.

No mean achievement.

I drove home.

The streets were dark and empty.

I felt very happy.

I didn't even feel guilty about leaving Kate for so long.

Well, not very guilty.

252

twenty-three

I parked the car and I put my key in the front door. There was a light on in the front room. That's funny, I thought, everyone's usually fast asleep by this hour. Please God, don't let it be Helen. Please don't let her have realized where I was and what I was up to. I was sure that my recent activities were written all over my face.

Maybe it was Anna who was up. Sacrificing a goat in the kitchen, or something like that. You know, dancing around the garden wrapped in blood-soaked sheets, chanting at the moon, biting the heads off live bats, that kind of thing.

I walked into the hall. The front room door opened and Mum appeared, with Dad standing behind her. They were both in their nightclothes. Mum was wearing her pink quilted dressing gown and had a few orange curlers stuck in the front of her hair.

They both looked white and shocked, as if something terrible had happened.

Which indeed it had, I suppose, if you want to regard my little indiscre- tion with Adam in that way.

"Claire!" said Mum. "Thank God you're home!"

"What?" I said, frightened. "What's happened?"

"Claire, come in and sit down," said Dad, taking charge.

My stomach lurched.

Something terrible had happened.

"Is it Kate?" I pleaded with Mum, clutching her arm. "Has something happened to her?"

253

A thousand horrible scenarios ran through my head.

She had been the victim of crib death.

She had been kidnapped.

She had choked.

Helen had dropped her.

Anna had put a spell on her.

It was all my fault.

I had left her.

I had left her while I went off to have sex with Adam.

How could I?

"No, no," said Mum soothingly. "It's not Kate."

"Well who then?" I asked, the horrible scenarios starting all over again.

Had something happened to any of my sisters?

Had Margaret been killed by a gangster in Chicago?

Had Rachel disappeared in Prague?

Had Anna got a job?

Had Helen apologized for something?

"It's James," blurted out Mum.

"James," I said dazedly, slowly sitting down on the couch. "Oh my God, James."

James.

I hadn't even thought of him when I was convinced that something awful had happened to someone that I loved. While I'd been in bed with Adam, something had happened to my husband. What kind of woman was I?

"What about James?" I asked them.

They both sat there, looking at me with caring compassionate faces.

"Oh, just tell me," I shouted. "Please tell me!"

I was prepared for the very worst: James had had an accident or some- thing while I had been writhing in the throes of passion with another man. Of course, I realized that my life was over.

I had no other option but to embrace celibacy. Maybe I would enter a convent. It was the least I could do. This was my punishment for sleeping with someone I didn't love. I never, ever wanted to see Adam again for as long as I lived. It was all his fault.

254

If I hadn't gone to bed with him, James would have been all right.

"He's here," said Mum gently.

"Here!" I screeched. "What do you mean--here?"

I looked around the room frantically, as if I expected him to suddenly appear from behind a curtain or from under the couch with a smooth smile, wearing a dinner jacket and smoking a cigar to say something like "My wife, I presume."

"Do you mean he's on the premises?" I asked hysterically.

My head was spinning like a top.

"No," said Mum, sounding a bit annoyed. "Do you think we'd let him stay here after all that's happened? No, he called. He's in Dublin all right, but he's staying in a hotel."

"Oh," I said. I thought I might faint.

"Does he want to see me?"

"Of course he does," said Dad. "But you don't have to if you don't want to."

"Jack," said Mum to him. "Of course she has to see him. How else are they going to work anything out? She has the child to think of, you know."