The next day, Theo slept late, uninterested in his day of supposed celebration. He took Griff for a run and did his best to stay out of Anna’s way until she left to meet Shania for a hospital appointment, part of her duty as birth partner. He waited until early evening before making his way into town, knowing that by six o’clock his father would be at his club and the seventh floor would be mostly deserted.

He let himself into his office, flicked on the desk lamp and scanned the room. He would always view Villiers House and his time in it with nostalgia. It was after all where he’d met Anna. Opening his leather sports bag, he took a couple of social policy books from the windowsill. This made him think of Spud. What wouldn’t he give for a pint with him right now, today of all days, when things with Anna were tense and he’d just taken his great leap into the unknown. Spud would have been full of good, practical advice.

He picked up a picture of himself and Anna on their wedding day with Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament as the backdrop. Pausing to run his fingertips over her beautiful face – Oh, my Anna – he then placed the lot into the bag and, rummaging through the drawers, retrieved his various bits and pieces: a mini desktop golf set, a Christmas gift from Anna, three spare ties, and several travel books purchased spontaneously from Stanfords during lunchtime jaunts up to Covent Garden.

He heard a sound coming from the corridor outside and looked up. With his heart thudding, he crept across his office floor, glancing around for something he might use as an impromptu weapon. He swiftly gave up on the idea – the thought of having to bash someone made him feel sick. He’d never been good at all that macho stuff; his plan had always been to run should the need arise.

Out in the corridor, he was surprised to see a thin shaft of light coming from under the boardroom door. He opened it an inch or so and narrowed his eyes.

The first thing he saw was a bottle of champagne on the table and two half-empty glasses. The second thing he saw was his father, sitting on the edge of the table. His shirt was undone, and he wasn’t alone. Marta was, as ever, looking suitably alluring in red lipstick and some sort of very revealing black lacy garment. Unseen by either of them, he watched his father lunge forward and grab Marta’s slender wrist, yanking her to him; his other hand held the back of her neck as she slid against him.

And just like that, Theo arrived at a place that he knew was a beginning and an end, a destination to which he’d been running ever since that holiday on the Riviera, if not before. He looked down at his palm and fingers and balled them into a fist. As a boy, he had once longed for the big hands of his father, hands he had seen drag his mother from the edge of a pool in a drunken rage, hands he had seen wrung together in frustration at his own many acts of perceived ineptitude. It wasn’t until this moment, however, as Marta lifted her foot and rested her heel on the wall for leverage, that Theo finally acknowledged the grown-up hands of the man he had become. And they were honourable hands, hands that had to put things right.

He slammed the door against the wall and watched them both jump. Marta let out a small, theatrical scream and clasped her blouse over her near-naked form as she fled the room. His father, however, took his time, seemingly unflustered; he smoothed his hair and buttoned up his shirt before casually reaching for his glass of champagne, sipping it as Theo walked closer.

Is this bold enough for you, Dad?

‘Well now, do you have permission to be here, as an ex-employee? Don’t we have to change the locks or something?’ his father asked with something akin to amusement in his voice.

‘I thought I might hit you.’ Theo wiped the sweat from his top lip with a trembling hand. ‘But, unlike you, I have enough regard for Mum not to put her through that.’ His voice was steady but his breath came in bursts.

‘Well, there’s a shock, you choosing the sissy-boy way out!’

Theo bit the inside of his cheek and tasted the iron seep of blood on his tongue. ‘I feel sorry for you, Dad.’

‘Don’t.’ Perry emptied his glass and put it down sharply.

‘No, I do.’ Theo held his stare. ‘You are a sad old man. Do you think Marta would be the slightest bit interested in a pot-bellied old boozer like you if you didn’t own the company?’

‘And do you think I give a shit?’ His dad laughed, his arms wide open. ‘Have you seen her?’

‘I remember the way you looked at Freddie at La Grande Belle – it was revolting, predatory.’

‘Who the fuck is Freddie?’

She had clearly been expunged from his dad’s memory, probably like countless others. That horrible holiday had proved so pivotal in Theo’s life, but to his father it was nothing. It was Theo’s turn to laugh. ‘I guess it must be easy to forget all the women you’ve had, every one of them just another distraction, a game you play with no regard to the damage you’re causing.’

‘You think I’m unique? Get real, boy! You think your mother and I should sit around watching good documentaries in our slippers, drinking cocoa into our dotage?’

Theo ignored him. ‘Let’s talk about Alexander.’ He spoke the name clearly, loudly, the name that usually hid at the back of his mouth, whispered only in the solitary darkness. ‘Do you remember his mother? What damage did you do her, and him?’

A flicker of surprise crossed his father’s face and it felt good to have the upper hand.

‘Yes, Dad, Alexander. Is he younger than me? How did that feel, knowing that expensive Vaizey education was being wasted on me while he was living God knows where in God knows what situation?’

Perry was smirking now. ‘You think you’re so clever, Theodore. You think you have it all figured out.’ There was a moment of hesitation while the two men stared at each other. ‘But here’s the thing.’ His dad took a step towards him. ‘Alexander did have the benefit of a Vaizey education. He was a couple of years older than you. How do you think I knew about your woeful performance on the rugby pitch? Your fucking weird antics with the gardener? Did you think I was psychic? No, Alex told me. Alex who works in the City, Alex who is a bloody success!’

Theo felt as if he’d been punched in the gut. His body folded and he gripped the table for support. ‘He... He was in my school?’

‘NO! He was in MY school!’ his father roared. ‘A Theobald’s boy of course! Xander Beaufort.’

Theo’s mouth dropped open. Xander Beaufort! He struggled to recall the boy’s face, but he remembered that he’d been a prefect at Theobald’s and he hadn’t cut Theo any slack. ‘Did... Did he know about me?’

‘Of course he bloody knew about you!’

Theo felt as if the room was spinning. His father reached for his jacket. You win, Dad, you win. I am done.

‘You see, Theo, life is about planning, it’s about putting things in place so that all the bits of the jigsaw fit together. The fact that you are starting to see the whole picture is, I suppose, inevitable.’

‘Did... Did Mum know Alexander was at Vaizey?’

‘What do you think?’

Theo felt winded by the revelation. He’d felt helpless and inadequate that night at La Grande Belle all those years ago, but this took it to another level. He’d said only recently that despite his father trying to force him, a square peg, into a round hole, he hadn’t broken. But that was then. Now he felt quite broken.

Perry walked around the table and made for the door. ‘Oh and happy birthday, Theodore. Save some cake for me!’

Theo left the office and stood in the street, breathing in the cold evening air and trying to clear his head. The depth of his father’s duplicity took his breath away and, try as he might, he couldn’t stop thinking of Sophie, and Kitty, and Anna. Like father, like son. Was he really so different from his dad? There was only one person he wanted to talk to right now, but sadly he was in Washington DC. He saw he had a missed call from Anna, probably wanting to know where he was, but instead he pressed the button to speak to Spud. Given the time difference, he wasn’t surprised to get an automated answerphone; Spud would be working.

‘Mate, it’s me.’ He took a deep breath. ‘It’s my birthday, but that’s not why I’m calling. I feel like I’m falling apart. I told my dad I knew about Alexander and...’ He paused. ‘Well, it didn’t go how I thought it might. It’s made me think about my situation. I don’t ever want Anna to feel how I felt tonight, to find out I have a little girl, a child in this world who doesn’t know me... I’m gabbling. Call me when you get this. I need to talk to you, Spud.’

He hung up the phone and hailed a cab to take him home.

*

Trying to quash the turmoil that swirled inside him, Theo straightened his tie and paid the cabbie before running up the steps to the front door. Taking a deep breath, he tried to erase the previous hour. He didn’t want the image in his mind of his father and Marta together, nor the memory of his father laughing at him. The revelation about his brother was still hard for him to accept. It felt like a bad dream. All he wanted was a drink, a shower and an early night. He hated his birthday, always had. He found the whole celebration a little forced and pointless, not to mention embarrassing. Anna, however, felt differently. It distressed her that his parents had been all but indifferent to his birthdays as a child and he knew she’d want to make a fuss today, as she always did, a sort of compensation for past lacks, with the obligatory opening of presents, a steak dinner and a fancy cake. To deny her the joy of organising these little celebrations felt mean. Although, right now, he’d never felt less like celebrating.

He let himself into the hallway and dropped his keys on the dresser. The house was darker than he’d expected – almost pitch black, in fact. He was grateful for the glow of the street light that filtered through the sitting-room window and cast an intricate flickering pattern over the hall floor.

‘Oh God, please not a surprise party,’ he whispered, ditching his jacket. He couldn’t face having to make small talk with Anna’s clutch of girl buddies and their other halves, with whom he had zero in common, or, worse, having to deal with his mother, knowing what he now knew and listening to the excuses for his father’s absence: ‘Daddy’s been caught up at the club... Dad’s at a planning meeting... Your father’s gone to an auction...’ He’d heard them all.

He fixed an expectant expression and opened the door with gusto. The sight that greeted him took him aback.

There was no party. No steak dinner, no gifts and no cake. The room was eerily quiet and cold. Even Griff sat with his muzzle on his extended paws, as if in contemplation.

Instead of a crowd brandishing blowers, standing under a homemade banner and wearing elasticated conical hats, there was just Anna, sitting alone at the kitchen table in the semi-darkness. As his eyes adjusted to the low light, he could see that her hair had been pulled back into a messy ponytail and that she’d been crying. Her eyes were red and swollen and she was rolling tiny sausages of shredded kitchen roll between her fingers.

‘What’s going on?’ he asked, looking around the room for clues as to her state of mind but finding none.

‘Please sit down, Theo.’ Her voice was small, cracked.

‘What’s the matter? Are you okay? Has something happened?’

She waited until he was seated before reaching for her phone. She laid it on the table between them and played her answerphone messages. ‘You have one message,’ the robotic voice informed.

Theo braced himself and cocked his head, waiting to hear what devastating news had made her so upset. Something to do with Jordan maybe? He mentally began planning her trip to the States, wondering how quickly he could get her packed and on a plane to New York. He slid his fingertips towards her hand, hoping that physical contact might bring some comfort. Anna flinched, quickly pulling her hand beneath the table and resting it in her lap.

The moment the message began, he knew.

His head swam, his stomach dropped and his mouth went dry. His heart was racing fit to burst as the bile rose in his throat.

‘Mate, it’s me. It’s my birthday, but that’s not why I’m calling. I feel like I’m falling apart. I told my dad I knew about Alexander and, well, it didn’t go how I thought it might. It’s made me think about my situation. I don’t ever want Anna to feel how I felt tonight, to find out I have a little girl, a child in this world who doesn’t know me... I’m gabbling. Call me when you get this. I need to talk to you, Spud.’

This was how his beloved Anna had learnt of the secret he had tried so hard to keep from her! After all that time spent fretting, plotting, dissembling... The countless restless nights worrying about whether it was better to tell her or not to tell her, waiting for the right time, the time when the news would do the least damage to her, to them. And that time had now been forced upon them, dropped like a bomb on their future. It had all boiled down to one slip of a finger on an answerphone message.

‘You have a little girl?’ she rasped.

‘Yes.’

‘You’re a dad.’ She swallowed, shaking her head. ‘Is Kitty her mum?’

He closed his eyes and nodded. God, this was worse than he could ever have imagined. She was sure to be jumping to horrible conclusions. Christ, why hadn’t he listened to Spud? Why hadn’t he come clean with Anna in their first weeks together? They could have got it all out of the way early...

‘I knew it. I always kind of had this feeling about her, the way you looked when you told me she was just some girl from school, the way you changed the subject when her name came up. You were always so evasive. I just knew.’

And there it was – the damage was done. Damage he might never be able to undo, however hard he tried to convince her.

‘Do you... Do you love Kitty?’ she asked quietly.

‘No, not at all. I was infatuated with her at school, but no.’ He shook his head.

The two of them sat quietly, on opposite sides of the kitchen table, in close physical proximity but miles and miles apart.

He tried again. ‘I don’t have any relationship with either of them, Anna. None at all. And I didn’t plan it – it just happened,’ he whispered. ‘It was long before I met you, a one-time thing, and I was told in no uncertain terms that I was not to make contact because, unlike you, Kitty knew that I would be a shit father and a fucking useless addition to any child’s life!’

Anna shook her head. ‘Don’t you fucking dare! Don’t you dare compare me with some woman you had a one-night stand with who doesn’t know you like I do! Don’t you dare suggest that it is for reasons she came up with that I have been denied motherhood! You are my husband!’ Her voice squeaked, sounding raw with sadness. ‘You’ve been cheating on me since the day we met.’

‘I have not!’

‘Yes, you have, Theo.’ She was cool now, her voice barely quivering. ‘Lying through omission and lying by keeping a secret, a big secret!’

‘I haven’t lied to you, Anna. Not intentionally. I might have held back, but—’

‘Held back? You have a child!’ She laughed, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. ‘Have you any idea what it’s like living with you?’ She looked up. ‘You have never given yourself to me, not fully. I have tried to be content with the little bits of you that you cast at me like pieces of a puzzle. And I scamper to catch whatever you throw because I love you.’ She broke off, crying again. ‘I love you so much, but every time you give me a new piece of you, you take away an old piece and I now know that I can never, ever complete the picture of you. Never. And as if that wasn’t punishment enough, I find out you have a little girl. A little girl you share with a woman who isn’t me, a little girl you phoned Spud to discuss while I was running around trying to make a party for you, collecting a fucking cake!’

‘Anna, I... I wish I had told you. I do! But every day, every month that passed made it seem harder and harder to come clean.’

‘Well, bravo, Theo.’ She clapped. ‘But I doubt you would have “come clean”, as you put it, if you hadn’t misdialled that number today.’

He looked away and both knew this to be the truth.

* * *

Creeping up the stairs, he trod with caution into their bedroom, a room in which he now felt like an intruder. He snatched items off hangers and rummaged in the drawers like a thief, only half conscious of what he was doing, wishing he was somewhere else, someone else. Eventually, with his suitcase in his hand, he walked slowly back downstairs to say goodbye.

Anna glanced up at him and his heart tore to see how wretched she looked. How had it come to this?

‘I don’t know what’s happening, Theo. I don’t know if we’re ending, and I don’t know what to do.’

‘I’m sorry, Anna. I love you.’

‘Please don’t keep telling me that you love me – it’s like wiping away the blood after you’ve cut me. It doesn’t help the hurt or excuse the act, not even a little bit.’

He hovered awkwardly by the fireplace and stuttered out his plan. ‘I’ve decided to go to Bristol. I need to see to some things there anyway, and I need to sort my head out. I’m sure you do too.’

‘I’m sad, Theo, but I’m not surprised.’ Her voice was a harsh croak. ‘I’ve been waiting for this conversation since we went to the Maldives. I think deep down I knew then that we were on a timer.’

‘You did?’

Anna nodded. ‘I think possibly since the day we married. I mean, I was never right for you as far as your parents were concerned – I don’t speak right, I don’t know the wrong and right way to do things and I never went to that bloody school they bang on about.’ She gave a false laugh. ‘And for someone who cares as much about what others think as you do, especially your shitty parents, whose approval you still crave...’ She let this hang.

‘Don’t say that.’ He choked back another wave of sobs. He hadn’t even had the chance to tell her about his earlier confrontation with his dad, or Marta, or bloody Xander Beaufort.

She followed him into the hall as he unhooked his coat from the newel post and ferreted in the pocket for his car keys. He bent towards her with arms slightly open, unsure whether or not to hold her, both of them instantly and painfully aware of how in such a short space of time the boundaries had shifted between them, to the point where he no longer felt able to take his wife in his arms and offer comfort.

‘Just go, Theo! Fuck off to Bristol or anywhere else!’ She jumped up and ran to the front door, holding it ajar, standing with her jaw clenched, waiting for him to pass.

‘Anna, I... I can’t be the man you need me to be.’

‘So you’ve said.’ She wiped away a stray tear. ‘And actually, tonight, for the first time ever, I am starting to believe you.’

Theo headed west in a daze, driving on autopilot, his head swimming with hurtful snippets – ‘you’ve been cheating on me since the day we met’ – his heart aching so much he didn’t know if he’d even make it to Bristol. He heard the long beep of an angry horn and was momentarily blinded by the flash of headlights on full beam. He swerved to retake the inside lane, unaware that he had drifted through lack of concentration. He swallowed, slowed his speed and took a swig of the coffee he’d picked up at the service station. He shook his head and put the radio on, desperate for something, anything, to distract him from the noise that filled his head.