'It's better the way we are.'

She seemed not to hear me. When she spoke her voice came from very far away. 'When I first saw you I wanted you so much, Bernard.' She sniffed. 'I thought I'd be able to make you so happy. I so envied your wife.'

'I didn't know you ever met my wife.'

'Of course I saw her about. Everyone admired her. They said she was one of the cleverest women to ever come and work in the Department. People said she would be the first woman Director General.'

'Well, people were wrong.'

'Yes, I was wrong too,' said Gloria. 'Wrong about everything. You'll never be happy with me, Bernard. You're too demanding.'

'Demanding? What are you talking about?' Too late I recognized that it had been my cue to say how happy I was with her.

'That's right; get angry.'

'I'm not getting angry,' I said very quietly.

'It's just as well that I'm going to Cambridge.'

She was determined to feel sorry for herself. There was nothing I could say. I gave her a kiss but she didn't respond. Her grief was not to be assuaged.

'Perhaps Doris could help more,' I said very tentatively.

Gloria looked at me and gave a bitter smile. ' Doris has given notice,' she said.

' Doris? Not Doris.'

'She says it's boring here in the suburbs.'

'Jesus Christ!' I said. 'Of course it is. Why else does she think we came here?'

'She had her friends in central London. She went to discos there.'

' Doris had friends?'

'Don't be a pig.'

'She can go up on the train.'

'Once a week. It's not much fun for her. She's still young.'

'We're all still young!' I said. 'Do you think I don't want to go with Doris 's friends to discos?'

'Making jokes won't help you,' said Gloria doggedly. 'We'll be in a terrible mess when she goes. It won't be easy to get someone who will get on well with the children.' Outside the rain kept coming down, thrashing through the apple tree and banging on the windows, while the wind buffeted against the chimney stack and screamed through the TV antenna. 'I'm going to see what the agency can offer, but we might have to pay more around here. The woman in the agency says this is a particularly high-wages area.'

'I bet she did,' I said.

Then the telephone rang on my side of the bed. I went to get it. It was Werner. 'I've got to see you,' he said. He sounded excited, or as near excited as the phlegmatic Werner ever got.

'Where are you?' I asked.

'I'm in London. I'm in a little apartment in Ebury Street, near Victoria Station.'

'I don't understand.'

'I flew to Gatwick.'

'What's happened?'

'We must talk.'

'We've got a spare room. Have you got wheels?'

'Better you come here, Bernard.'

'To Victoria? It will take half an hour. More perhaps.' The idea of dragging up to central London again appalled me.

'It's serious,' said Werner.

I capped the phone. 'It's Werner,' I explained. 'He says he's got to see me. He wouldn't say that unless it was really urgent.'

Gloria gave a little shrug and closed her eyes.

I didn't realize what had happened to some of those little hotels in Ebury Street. It used to be a no-man's-land, where the rucksack-laden hordes from the bus terminal met the smart set of Belgravia. In a curious juxtapositioning that is peculiarly English, Ebury Street provided Belgravia with its expensive little boutiques and chic restaurants and offered budget-conscious travellers cheap overnight lodging. But change was inevitable and Werner had found a small but luxuriously appointed suite 'all major credit cards accepted' with twenty-four-hour service and security, rubber plants in the lobby and Dom Perignon in the refrigerator.

'Have you eaten?' said Werner as soon as he opened the door to me.

'Not really.'

'Good. I've booked a table for us. It's just round the corner. I read a rave review of it in a flight magazine coming over.' He said it in a distracted way, as if his mind was really on something entirely different.

'Wonderful,' I said.

'No,' said Werner. 'I think it might really be good.' He looked at his watch. He was agitated: I knew the signs. 'The magazine said the fresh salmon mousse is very good,' he said as if not totally convinced.

'How did you find this hotel, Werner?' He was my best friend, but I never really understood Werner in the way I understood other people I'd known for a longtime. He was not just secretive; he masked his real feelings by assuming others. When he was happy, he looked sad. When he made a rib-tickling joke, he scowled as if resenting laughter. Winning, he looked like a loser. Was that because he was a Jew? Did he feel he had to conceal his true feelings from a hostile world?

'It's an apartment, a service apartment, not a hotel,' he corrected me. The rich of course have more words than the rest of us, for they have more goods and services at their disposal. 'A fellow I do business with at Kleinwort Benson keeps it as his London base. He said I could use it. Champagne? Whisky or anything?'

'A glass of wine,' I said.

He stepped into the tiny kitchen. It was just a fluorescent-lit box, designed to encourage the use of the 'service' rather than a place to do any proper cooking. He took a bottle of wine from the refrigerator, a Meursault; the bottle was full but uncorked as if he'd guessed what I would like to drink, and prepared for my arrival. He poured a good measure into a Waterford wineglass and put the bottle back again. The refrigerator's machinery began to purr, setting off a soft rattle of vibrating bottles.

'Happy days, Werner,' I said before I drank.

He smiled soberly and picked up his wallet from a side-table and made sure his credit cards were all there before putting it in his pocket. Meursault: it was a luxury I particularly enjoyed. I suppose Werner could have guzzled it all day long if he'd had a mind to.

Most people were hurtled through life on a financial switchback, a roller-coaster that decided for them whether they must economize or splurge. Not Werner; Werner always had enough. He decided what he wanted – anything: whether it was a little place round the corner that did a good salmon mousse, or a splendid new car – and put his hand in his pocket and bought it. Mind you, Werner's needs were modest: he didn't hanker for yachts or private planes, keep mistresses, gamble or throw lots of extravagant parties. Werner simply had money more than sufficient for his needs. I envied his unbudgeted easygoing lifestyle; he made me feel like a money-grubbing wage-slave because, I suppose, that's exactly what I am.

I took my wine and sat down in one of the soft leather armchairs and waited for him to tell me what was distressing him so much that he would fly to London and drag me up here to talk with him. I looked around. So it was an apartment. Yes, I could see that now. It was not quite like a hotel suite; it looked lived in. Glenn Gould was playing Bach uncharacteristically softly on the CD player, and there were two big hideous modern paintings on the walls, instead of the tasteful lithographs that architects and interior designers bought wholesale.

It was a place used by men who were away from home. You could tell that from the books. As well as year after year of outdated restaurant guides, street maps and museum catalogues, there were the sort of books that help pass the time when all the work is done. Dog-eared detective stories of the sort that can be read over and over again without any feeling of repetition, very thin books by thin lady novelists who win prizes, and very thick ones by thick lady novelists who don't. And a whole shelf full of biographies from Mother Teresa to Lord Olivier via 'Streisand the Woman and the Legend'. Long long hours away from home.