‘And the following month she killed herself.’

‘She killed herself, or she took an accidental overdose. Anyway,’ he sighed, wearily, his remembered rage quite gone, ‘she was dead. That’s how it finished for Joanna. And it was all so unnecessary. Malcolm was fourteen by then. I couldn’t have controlled his seeing her even if I’d wanted to, which I didn’t, for more than a year or two at the most.’

Some decisions are so difficult to unravel; decisions made by countries and decisions of private individuals can be impossible to explain. Why did Napoleon invade Russia? Why didn’t Charles I make peace when it was offered? And why did Joanna Langley run away and marry this man when he was an anxious and desperate grotesque, but leave him when he was at the beginning of his triumphs? Why did she try to pull their boy in half when he was old enough to make up his own mind about both his parents and their warring philosophies? Why did she spiral into death-dealing depression when she really had nothing to fear?

‘I don’t understand why we never heard about it. Why isn’t it on the Internet?’

‘Mainly because I have spent an enormous amount of time and money making sure that no one hears about it. I kept the reporting to a minimum at the time, I will not tell you how, and I have one man who spends his working life combing the Web to get rid of any stories that I dislike, including even a whisper of Joanna.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I owe it to her. I ruined her life. I won’t let her be a tabloid item in death.’

I ruined her life. I was so struck by the unvarnished, stark, merciless guilt in this. He allowed himself no defence at all. ‘How sad,’ I said. And I meant it with all my heart. I was truly sad. Sad at the ruin that, in a few short minutes, I’d heard engulf the whole House of Langley. In my sorrowing mind, rich, nice Alfred and his scratchy, ambitious Valerie had been suddenly pulled from their golden pedestal, where they had been secure in my imaginings until now and dashed down, like Don Giovanni, back to the place below, from whence they came. While Joanna, my lifelong standard for how lovely a woman can be, lay desecrated and dead, her scabrous wrist pitted with needle marks, her dirty, tangled hair spread out on a urine-stained, concrete floor somewhere in the Midlands. ‘How very sad.’

I looked at my watch. It was time to leave. I understood now that Kieran had embraced the chance to talk about the wife who had left him against his will, but who would never leave his head. He had simply wanted to talk about her with someone who’d known her and those opportunities must be getting rare, even for him. He noticed me checking the time. ‘I’d like to show you something before you go,’ he said, and leaving the magnificent Chamber of Privilege he led me down the passage, past half-open doors revealing delectable rooms for eating and reading and other delights, until we came to the last door in the row. He opened it and ushered me into what was postulated as a study of some sort, with a desk and a comfortable chair. I could sense that Kieran probably did his actual work in it, as opposed to leafing through papers with a scribbling secretary in the glamorous library along the passage. Certainly he spent a lot of time here, as much as he could I would say, but the reason was not because it was quiet or tidy. In fact, its role as a writing room was not its moral purpose. This was a shrine. All four walls were covered with framed photographs, one consisting entirely of pictures of Joanna, Joanna as I remembered her, young and definitively gorgeous; then Joanna a little older and a little older still, but never Joanna old. Joanna at thirty, looking more harassed and careworn and lined than she should have done; Joanna at thirty-three, pictured leaving the law courts during the divorce, a candid picture of her unhappiness, so generously taken by the snapper of some evening rag but presumably unprinted; Joanna at thirty-five, sitting with her son, laughing. Kieran was looking with me. ‘That was taken by a friend of hers. Malcolm was there for lunch or something and this friend took it. It was the last picture of them together. It’s the last picture of her. She had less than a week to go. You couldn’t have told.’

‘No, indeed.’ I stared at the smiling mouth and the tired eyes. I found myself hoping it had been a really happy day, that last outing with her beloved child. I glanced around for newspaper pictures of the story. Even after all he’d said, I was surprised there weren’t any. ‘And there was no coverage at all? I still don’t understand how you kept it out of the papers completely. Even the local ones?’

He looked uncomfortable. ‘There were a few squibs, but not much.’

‘I couldn’t find anything on Google. There was really nothing about her at all, once you’d separated.’

Kieran knew why. ‘She used my real name after the divorce. That was the name on everything in her bag when they found her. I managed to stop them making the connection.’ He hesitated. ‘You can read the coverage if you punch in Joanna Futtock.’

‘Futtock?’ I was so glad to know that I could still find something funny.

He looked rather sheepish. ‘Why do you think I never gave up “de Yong”?’

‘I did wonder. What was your mother’s maiden name?’

‘Cock.’ He gave a despairing sigh. ‘I ask you.’

‘Some people have all the luck,’ I said. Then we both did laugh.

I’d started to look round the other walls of this little star chamber. There were pictures of Joanna with Kieran, a young Kieran with his awful blond mop and an apparently endless supply of the ugliest clothes in the world. Then grown-up Kieran; Kieran successful; Kieran shaking hands with presidents and kings; even Kieran in better and better suits. And alongside Kieran, everywhere you looked, there were more and more pictures of the boy. Malcolm in the school photograph from pre-prep; Malcolm swimming; Malcolm on a bicycle; Malcolm on a horse; Malcolm the public schoolboy, with both parents, one on either side of the sulking child, resisting his role at some Speech Day celebration. Malcolm skiing; Malcolm at university; Malcolm graduating with a very serious face; Malcolm backpacking. ‘What’s he up to now?’ I asked.

Kieran was silent for a second, then he spoke in as pleasant a manner as he could manage. ‘He’s dead, too.’

‘What?’ I did not know the boy at all and the father only slightly, but I felt as if I were being pistol-whipped.

‘Nothing bad. Not like his mother.’ This time I could see his eyes filling, even while he remained in admirable control of his voice. ‘He was perfectly well, twenty-three, just starting at Warburg’s and he couldn’t shake off a bout of flu, so we thought he should be looked at.’ He stopped to breathe, back in that terrible moment. ‘I took him to hospital for some tests and he was dead seven weeks later.’ He rubbed his nose swiftly with his left hand, trying unsuccessfully to push back the tears. He talked on, more to steady himself than to give me any information. ‘And that was it, really. I didn’t quite take in what had happened. Not at first. Not for a while. A few years afterwards I even married again.’ He shook his head at life’s absurdity. ‘Of course, it was ridiculous and it didn’t last long. I made a mistake, you see.’ He looked back at me. ‘I thought I could still go on living. Anyway,’ he sighed, as if this at least was understood between us, ‘after I’d got rid of Jeanne I sold the houses and everything else, and came here. I did bring a lot of stuff with me, as you can see. I hadn’t signed off completely.’

‘How do you spend your time?’

‘Oh.’ He thought for a second, as if this was rather a curious query and difficult to answer. ‘I’ve still got quite a lot of things on the boil and I take a bit of interest in financing research, into cancer, mainly. I’d like to think that it might help to prevent it happening to someone else. And I do worry about education these days, or rather the lack of it. If I’d been born now, I’d have ended up pulling pints in a bar in Chelmsford. I mind about those kids who’ll never have a chance, the way things are.’ He seemed pleased to think about these issues and glad of his role in them. Which he deserved to be. ‘Apart from that I read. I watch a lot of television and I enjoy it, which nobody admits to. You see,’ he tried to smile but gave up, ‘the thing is, when your only child is dead, you’re dead.’ He paused as if to mark the rightness of this sentence to himself. ‘Your life is finished. You’re not a parent any more. You’re nothing. It’s over. You’re just waiting for your body to catch up with your soul.’