Jack wanted to write to Harry about it but he could not. Harry’s life had changed too and he did not have room in it for Jack’s problems. His beloved wife Debbie had left him. She had fallen for another man, a fellow firefighter, and one day she had told Harry that she was leaving. Debbie explained that even the most perfect love affairs sometimes have sell-by dates and she had reached hers. In vain did Harry protest that those sell-by dates are usually meaningless, that the food is just as good for months afterwards – years, in the case of tinned food. You just have to have the courage to not take the easy way out and throw it away but keep it until you had need of it. Debbie felt that the metaphor was overstretched. The simple fact was that she had become besotted by a big, tough, brave guy and that she no longer loved the man she had married almost as a girl, the man who spent all day making chairs and tables.

“How long has it been going on?” Harry asked.

“It doesn’t matter how long,” Debbie replied, unable even to look at the man whom she had loved so well and for so long.

And Harry knew that it had been going on for some time. His love had been betrayed.

Soon Jack and Courtney’s marriage was also over in everything but name. He led his life and she led hers, which, during Jack’s seven months in Kuwait and briefly Iraq, began to include the occasional love affair. There was no question of divorce. Courtney was a traditionalist, besides which Jack’s career had finally begun to hit the fast track. After the Gulf War he was promoted rapidly and began to mix more in political circles. The Democrats were not going to stay in power for ever and the Republicans were on the lookout for likely lads who might help to break their hold on power, particularly handsome war veterans. Courtney was highly ambitious, and her marriage to Jack became what Harry had suspected it was all along: a mutually supportive marketing exercise.

One thing Courtney was grateful for was that, despite her occasional indiscretions, Jack appeared never to have affairs. She and he had occasional sex and that seemed to be enough for him. The only thing that Jack wanted to get inside was the uniform of the commander of the army.

“We’re friends, sure enough,” Courtney confided in her mother, “but I don’t really think he has passion for anything but leadership.”

It was not true, of course. Jack still had passion for one other thing besides ambition, although he had imagined that passion was long buried. He still craved Polly and now, as Jack stood once again before her, Polly knew it. She could see it in his eyes as he stared at her across her room.

“So your wife doesn’t love you and now you’re here. In the middle of the night,” Polly said. “What’s the idea? Suddenly fancied a little blast from the past?”

There. She’d said it. The thing she’d been wanting to ask from the beginning. Had he come here to try to fuck her?

Jack stared into his glass, nervously rotating it in his hand. The question was banging around his head. Had he come back to try to fuck her? The truth was, of course, that he hadn’t, but by Christ he fancied it all the same.

“Well?” Polly asked again. “You’re miles from home. Your wife doesn’t understand you. Did you suddenly remember me and get a little horny, Jack?”

That he could answer. “Not suddenly, Polly. Always.”

And he meant it. Not one day had gone by since the terrible night he’d left her when Jack had not wanted to see Polly again. To taste again the delights of sex with the only girl he had ever loved.

Polly could see that he meant it, too. It was written in his eyes. Deep inside her something was laid to rest. He had loved her after all.

“Oh, Jack.” She stepped forward. She knew that she shouldn’t. As a strong woman and a feminist she should spurn his selfish desires. She knew that he had only come back for a night. That he would leave again in the morning as he had done before, but she didn’t care. If anyone had a right to a bit of comfort by General Jack Kent it was her. Let the devil take tomorrow; she was opting for one less lonely night.

“Do you know, I have never told my wife about us.” Jack was still fighting it, still holding back.

“I don’t want to talk about your wife.”

“I thought you did.”

“Well, I don’t.”

Polly shifted her weight slightly from one bare foot to the other; it was a tiny move, but sexual. A loosening of the body. Jack glanced up. She still stood that same way that she used to, relaxed, a little lazy on the hips. He felt his whole resolve dissolving.

“Yeah, well anyway, I never told her. I never told anyone.”

“As if anyone would care now?” said Polly. “As if it matters in the slightest after all these years. Unless you’re embarrassed or something. Is that it? Are you scared that one day someone else but me might find out that you’re a craven shit?”

“Maybe it’s just that I don’t want to share you, even in my memories.”

Polly’s emotions were on a knife edge. They could not have been more mixed if she’d run them through the washing machine. It is true that her desire for him had begun to overcome the anger she felt about his ancient betrayal. However, it did not take much to bring sixteen years of resentment back into focus.

“That’s nice,” she said. “Especially considering all you left either of us with is memories.”

Jack looked so crestfallen that she felt sorry for him. Something she would not have imagined possible only an hour before.

“OK, OK,” she put in quickly. “It was a long time ago. Different decade, different world order. It happened, that’s all. I suppose you’re not the only guy in history who did the dirty on a girl. And anyway. You did come back…”

Polly’s stance relaxed further and the room positively hummed with Jack’s longing. Her left hip dropped a little lower, pushing the knee forward. Her mouth fell slightly open. She rested her hands upon her thighs and was reminded that she was still dressed in a rather unflattering plastic rainmac.

“Think I’ll take off this raincoat,” she said. “My nightie’s probably slightly less stupid.”

Polly let the raincoat slip off as if it had been a neglige and stood before Jack dressed only in a shirt, the top couple of buttons of which were already undone. She was breathing more quickly now and her bosom was again rising and falling defiantly. Her hair, which Polly had thought a mess, might also have been described as gloriously tousled, ravishingly unkempt.

She was so beautiful, Jack could hardly bear it, yet still he hesitated.

“It’s been a long time, Jack,” said Polly, which was clearly a nice way of saying, “Come to bed.” She took a step or two towards him.

Jack could not help but catch a momentary glimpse of Polly’s thighs as the movement of her legs parted her shirt at its hem. He was inches from the soft, pale splendour of Polly’s most private self, and he could scarcely bear it. This had been no part of his plans.

Polly bent down and took the glass from Jack’s hand. In so doing her nightshirt fell forward and Jack was almost painfully aware of her breasts as they hung before him inside the gaping shirt. He looked. How could he resist? He stared. For a moment he could actually see between her breasts and through to her stomach beyond and the top of her knickers, which were crimson against her skin.

“I’ve missed you too,” Polly whispered softly, her mouth not nine inches from his ear. “I’ve been lonely.”

“It’s an international epidemic.”

Polly put Jack’s glass down on the little table beside his chair. Or rather on top of the pile of magazines, books and coffee mugs already on top of the. little table by his chair. Then she took Jack’s hands and drew him to his feet. Jack could now feel the warmth of Polly’s breath, the warmth of her body. Her hair smelled exactly the same as it had always done. He could see that her nipples had hardened again beneath the thin cloth of her nightshirt. She had always had such responsive nipples, he remembered. They were up and down all night, leaping into life at the slightest provocation, an infallible barometer of the state of her arousal. The current provocation was scarcely slight. They were both consumed with a taut, vibrant desire and the points of Polly’s breasts seemed almost to be straining to reach him.