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him to bed as soon as her child was born. She was five months pregnant now, and it hardly showed. Four months was a long time to Alice.
    ‘Alice, I do not mean to doubt your capabilities, but how are you going to look after your baby? You are so young. It would be a shame in a way, to tie yourself to a child. Children are a lot of work.’
    ‘I shall manage‚’ said Alice fretfully. ‘I might have it adopted.’
    ‘Don’t look so frightened, Alice. You could manage it alone, of course. But you might not want to manage. When Liza and Jenny were born my wife ran away. She didn’t want children. She wrote for money for a few years. She’s dead now, poor woman. But anyway, for a couple of months I had to go out to work and feed two babies with a bottle, andchange them and everything else. Kate saved my life then. I was twenty-five, and you are eight years younger than that.’
    ‘I didn’t know you’d been with Kate that long,’ said Alice.
    ‘Oh yes. She mothered the twins. Now … well, they’re nine and they can look after themselves and she and I – we just live together.’ Alice glanced sharply at him, and he noticed it.
    ‘Did you pay her to care for them?’ asked Alice.
    ‘Not exactly. She had just left her husband and Charlotte had just deserted me, so we were flung together. I went out to work and we both lived on the money. But half the money was her right, so you could say I paid her. It was when they were three that she won the scholarship to medical school. And now she is a doctor. She is a great success,’ said Anatole. He was a musician, but he rarely finished what he composed, and earned money by giving music lessons and playing in restaurant bands.
    ‘Why did you give your daughters English names?’ asked Alice.
    ‘I called them after Jane and Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice. Kate called them Liza and Jenny. I couldn’t think of French names for them. I hardly speak French any more. When I went to Russia I learned Russian in two months and forgot a lot of French. Now I can’t speak a word of Russian. The same with English. If I left the country I’d forget it all.’
    ‘You’re right, Anatole. You’ve made me think about it. I don’t really want it. In fact, it’s like a cancer, eating me,’ said Alice very quietly.
    ‘I never said you don’t really want it.’
    ‘I know that’s what you meant.’
    ‘Alice, I did not. I meant that you should only think hard about the whole business before the child is born. No child should have a miserable and indecisive mother. Alice, I will come again tomorrow and give you that book.’
    ‘Will you bring Liza?’ said Alice.
    ‘Not Jenny too? Well, yes I shall ask Liza.’
    Anatole looked up at the calm, comfortable, dark grey house. On his way out, he mentioned the matter of Alice’s baby to Augustus and Clementina. Since Alice had arrived, Clementina had made a great fuss of her. She had insisted onher eating strengthening foods, and going to bed early, and cutting down her smoking, and keeping warm and not walking up or downstairs unaided. Clementina had had two miscarriages and a stillborn child. She was now in her early forties.
    ‘Alice, did you mean to get pregnant?’ said Augustus at dinner on Sunday.
    Alice paused. ‘Yes,’ she said.
    ‘Why did you do it?’
    ‘So I could get away quickly from my uncle’s.’
    ‘Did you start having the affair simply in order to become pregnant?’
    ‘No. It was for companionship. I liked Luke. And I think he was in love with me. But I hope not,’ she added, and frowned. ‘I enjoyed the affair. I stayed on for quite some time because of him. Then I couldn’t stand it any more. It was my governess who really drove me away. And the alternative to her was school. So I decided to become pregnant.’
    ‘And you thought only of the pregnancy, not of the baby?’ said Clementina.
    ‘Yes,’ said Alice, and added, ‘I was desperate!’
    ‘I’m not criticising you, Alice. What it is to