Simon. My eyes linger on his face. My husband. Though we have been married for more than two years, it is still sometimes hard to believe. Simon first asked me out a few days after I came to work for him at the Foreign Office. His overture was small and tentative: an invitation to drinks after work. “You should not feel obliged to accept,” he said quickly. “Just because of our professional relationship.”

At first, I declined. Just weeks after Paul’s death, I had no interest in fun. But Simon persisted, asking me to join him for lunch the next day. I remember him standing over my desk, his watery-blue eyes hopeful. “Fine, thank you,” I relented.

After I accepted his first invitation, he quickly grew more forward, inviting me to dinner or the theater several times per week. Once I accompanied him to a party thrown by a diplomat and his wife who had just returned from a tour in Bombay at their stylish Notting Hill home. I sampled spicy curry dishes that made my nose run, sipped an exotic cocktail called a kir.

“I’m proud of you, Marta,” Delia remarked once. “For having moved on so bravely with your life after, well, the American boy…”

“Mmm,” I had replied vaguely. Of course, I had not really moved on. Simon’s company was pleasant enough. He talked passionately about international politics, told fabulous stories of his travels in Eastern Europe as a student that reminded me of my childhood home. Our dates were a welcome distraction, an escape from the long evenings at Delia’s, haunted by my memories of Paul. And I was grateful to Simon, of course, for my job. But sometimes as he squired me to dinners and parties, I felt guilty. Was I misleading him? Simon knew about my engagement to Paul and my recent loss, though, and still seemed eager to court me. I had not thought of it as more, though, and so I was quite stunned when, just four weeks after he first asked me out, Simon proposed marriage.

It was on a day trip to Brighton as we strolled along the promenade by the sea that Simon turned to me and pulled a small velvet box from his pocket. “I know we’ve only been seeing each other for a short time. But I’m very fond of you, Marta, and I think we can have a fine life together.”

I did not answer right away but gazed out across the Channel. Considering his tepid proposal, I could not help but think of Paul, dropping to one knee on the rain-soaked Paris street, eyes burning, as he asked me to marry him. I had not considered marrying anyone else. Simon was not Paul. I could never love him in that way. But Paul was gone. I looked back at Simon, who had taken the ring from the box and was holding it out toward me. He was not unattractive, and I knew from the other secretaries that, as one of the only single men in the department, he was considered quite a good prospect, if something of an enigma. He liked me, and he would not be unkind. “Fine,” I said, realizing too late that mine was not the most gracious of responses. “I mean, I would love to marry you.”

We were married in a small ceremony in Delia’s parlor the following week by a rabbi Simon knew. Neither of us seemed to want a long engagement, or a big wedding. Simon was an only child and his parents had both died, his mother at a young age of cancer and his father of a heart attack shortly after Simon had left for college. I, of course, had no family. So the wedding consisted of Delia and Charles on my side, a few colleagues on his. Simon was unable to get away from work for a honeymoon just then, but he promised me a trip somewhere grand over the winter holiday.

But the honeymoon never took place. A few weeks after we were married, the nausea I felt in the park that day worsened, often making it difficult for me to get to work in the mornings. The doctor Simon insisted I see confirmed my unspoken suspicion: I was pregnant. Seven months later, I gave birth to a baby girl, Rachel.

Voices at the conference room table pull me from my thoughts. The D.M. has indicated that we will conclude for the day, and now the men at the table are standing, shuffling papers as they speak to one another. Inwardly, I groan. I had hoped that the meeting would have finished in one sitting, even if it meant working a bit late. But now the meeting will resume tomorrow morning. I do not relish the prospect of staying awake through a second day of the D.M.’s droning.

As I stand, I try to catch Simon’s eyes again. Perhaps I can find an excuse to skip the morning session tomorrow, plead an excess of correspondence to type. But he is engaged in conversation with one of the men across the table and does not meet my gaze. I will ask him tonight, if he does not get home too late. I take my notebook and walk from the conference room toward the elevator, press the down button. Simon and a few of the men enter the corridor behind me, still debating a point about Hungary. The elevator door opens and I step inside, but the men do not follow. As the doors close, I look in Simon’s direction one more time. He does not notice, but remains engrossed in conversation.

What happened to that man who courted me so attentively? I muse as the elevator descends to the third floor. At the end of the hall, I push open the door of the office, entering the small reception area where my desk sits. To the left, another closed door leads to Simon’s office. He seemed so pleased the day I accepted his proposal. But things changed quickly after we married. I set down my notepad and pick up my bag from behind the desk. Putting on my coat, I make my way to the elevator once more.

I cross the lobby and step out onto the street, joining the stream of government workers headed to the buses at Trafalgar Square. It is nearly dark and the damp air has a biting chill, more winter than autumn now. A few minutes later, I board the bus, still thinking about Simon. It is not that he is unkind. He is unfailingly pleasant, and on the rare occasions when I ask him to do something around the house or go somewhere with Rachel and me, he readily obliges. But the rest of the time, he lives in his own world, spending long hours at the office, holing up in his study at night.

Sometimes, I reflect, as the bus makes its way slowly through the traffic-clogged city streets, I almost wish for the occasional temper or spat, some reaction to my presence. But that would take more energy than he cares to give. Outwardly he appears an attentive husband, holding my arm and listening. Once at a department social function, I overheard him refer to me as his “dear wife” with a tilt of his head that suggested affection. But the moment we walk through the front door of the house, all signs of interest disappear. It is as if he likes the idea of having a wife, as if I was simply something to be acquired, like a fine car or painting.

Fifty minutes later, I step off the bus at Hampstead High Street, drawing the neck of my coat closed against the wind. Making my way past the closing shops, I turn onto a residential street lined with tall row houses. Ours is second from the end on the right. From a distance it looks like the others, wide windows, a tidy front lawn. Only as one draws closer are the differences apparent: the way the left porch column seems to slump in defeat, the cracks that run up the steps. Simon, who inherited the house from his parents and lived here on his own for more than fifteen years, does not seem to notice the decay. In the early months of our marriage, I tried to improve upon the appearance of the house, tending to the garden and planting flowers, painting the peeling front door a fresh white. But as I grew larger with my pregnancy, I was not able to do as much, and after Rachel was born, I was too busy to care.

Perhaps I would have done more if Simon had seemed to notice. I walk up the porch steps and pick up a toy ball that lies near the front door, carry it inside. A savory aroma fills the air. “Hello?”