What became of us

even then?
    ‘Sex is a private act and so privacy is essentially part of it, isn’t it?’ Barry argued.
    ‘So it always involves betrayal, does it?’
    ‘I wouldn’t put it that strongly,’ he said. ‘Like most things in a relationship, it’s negotiable.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘Well, I’m sure that very often one partner suspects something is up, but decides to turn a blind eye to it. I assume that’s how Hillary Clinton dealt with Bill’s peccadillo, hoping that it would blow over,’ he smiled wryly, ‘so to speak.’

    * * *

    Perhaps Barry himself had given her the answer, Ursula thought now.
    She must not tell him. If he suspected, then he would turn a blind eye, and they would continue as normal.
    But it wouldn’t be normal, because she hated secrets. She didn’t even really like surprises very much and it would eat her up to conceal something from Barry every day of their life together.
    Far better, surely, just to say what had happened. Plead guilty, with mid-life crisis and death of best friend as mitigation. Punishment would be a few days in solitary, then a bit of rehabilitation in the shape of a weekend away, somewhere nice, with a golf course, and vintage claret at dinner, all on her.
    The weekend in Oxford had been like virtual reality, she would explain, where she had been allowed to try out another sort of life and find that it was not to her taste at all.
    But then he would ask why she had needed to try it in the first place. And there would be more lies involved in answering that without hurting him.
    Even the truth was going to end in lies. Her life was going to be irrevocably changed by what she had done. There was no good way to explain it, reverse it, or forget it because it would be there for ever.

    Lose ten pounds in a week, an advert next to the letters page promised.
    Don’t bother, Ursula thought. When you are slim you are attractive and that creates all sorts of problems. A fat woman is a happy woman because at least she knows her limitations. A fat woman doesn’t even bother to fantasize about making love to a stranger on a tropical beach, she just goes straight for the Bounty ice cream.
    She wondered if she had let herself be so fat for so long because it was easier that way. There were far fewer surprises when you were fat. Maybe that was why people always said you looked well.
    The train was pulling into the station and suddenly Ursula’s stomach was full of butterflies, as if she were going for an interview, not just going home. She stood up and took a deep breath.
    ‘Do you want to take this? I’ve finished with it now.’ The woman offered her the copy of Panache.
    Did she want to read the agony aunt’s advice?
    ‘No thanks,’ Ursula said. ‘I have to decide on my own,’ she added, as if her travelling companion had been party to her thoughts throughout the journey.

Chapter 43

    There were paper plates with chicken bones, dollops of barbecue ketchup and a few escaped fronds of frisee lettuce strewn over the picnic rug. The little girls had finished eating and were playing Ring-a-Ring-a-Roses with Manon on the lawn.
    ‘God, paper plates are useless, aren’t they?’ Annie remarked, thinking that she had hit upon a subject that everyone was likely to agree on, but forgetting that she wasn’t supposed to swear.
    ‘Not if you’re the one doing the washing up,’ Geraldine retorted.
    ‘Oh no, they’re absolutely wonderful for that. What I meant was when you’re trying to cut things up, they kind of give way. The number of sausages I’ve lost in my life because of paper plates!’
    Roy was staring at the girls, but she thought she saw a glimmer of a smile pass across his features.
    ‘What job are you doing these days, Anne?’ Penny’s father asked.
    He had changed his vicar’s robes for a pair of ancient colonial shorts, which on anyone else would have looked rather Gap khaki and stylish, but he had an old man’s spindly, white hairy legs, and he was still sporting his dog collar over a crisply ironed pale blue shirt. On his feet were a pair of the kind of white and pink rubber flip-flops she could remember in baskets outside the Southend branch of Woolworth’s when she was a child.
    ‘Oh Trevor, don’t be so silly, she has her own television show,’ Geraldine said.
    She had two tones of voice, Annie thought, ordering and scolding.
    ‘Well, well, well,’ Trevor said, ‘we used to watch a bit of television when the children were