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years of Dominic’s life in the same manner, but at least I knew now it was nothing to worry about. Satirical, composed, distant, critical, even disdainful, he resisted intimacy from infancy.
    He used to remind me of that bit in Twelfth Night where Olivia is rhapsodising about Cesario/Viola: ‘ O, what a deal of scorn looks beautiful / In the contempt and anger of his lip! ’ (I know that bit because I once played Olivia in a school production. I wanted to be Viola, and wear emerald satin capri pants, but it was Olivia or nothing.)
    From the age of approximately three (which I believe was when he decided he was too old to hold my hand), Dominic did a great curled lip. It’s the look aspired to by those surly male models in fashion magazines: it came naturally to him. And she was right, that large-handed infant-welfare lady: it didn’t mean he was unaffectionate. He was a fervent child, but selectively fervent: he didn’t bestow his love on just anyone, in the indiscriminate way Kate had.
    Sophie is a cross between them, I suppose. Less obsessively fastidious than Dominic, more judicious than Kate. Readier with her embraces than her uncle, not as clingy as her mother. ‘Love you, Gandie’, Sophie will say, hugging me goodbye with her rapid firm touch. ‘I love you too, sweetness,’ I will say, but she’s so quick, I’m often saying it to an empty room, a closing door.
    The next time Sophie asked me about what she so insouciantly calls the olden days, I was ready for her. She wanted to know about our wedding, mine and Steve’s. She’d want to know about my second wedding, too, one of these days, I knew, but sufficient unto the day and so on.
    I’d gone through the old case under the bed and I’d pulled out the wedding album. I don’t know why I have it and Steve doesn’t, but that’s how it is. I’d even spent a bit of time going through it on my own, turning the pages with amazement, with sorrow.
    There Steve and I are, captured forever with imprudent smiles on our faces, foolish hopes in our hearts. We stand awkwardly, trying to follow the photographer’s directions, both too self-conscious, too young, lacking in composure or the sense of the theatrical that permeates good photographs of big occasions, landmarks, milestones in one’s life. I remember him telling Steve to stand on an angle, his feet just so: Steve simply couldn’t manage it. His feet were like clown’s feet, flopping over the ground in awkward dispositions. He turned too far, anxiously, then not far enough, shuffling, his face splitting into his daft grin.
    I remember it as a black day, a disastrous day, the day of my greatest mistake. Yet we all look as happy-go-lucky as kids on a picnic. No prevision dulled our spirits; no disquiet fingered us with its bleak chill touch.
    We look so innocent: that’s what I can’t quite fathom. I don’t mean sexually innocent: Steve and I had slept together — not often, but a few times. I suppose there was a political and moral dimension to our innocence. We simply had no idea that such good intentions might take one on so shadowy and truncated a route, no idea of the sharp, mashing teeth of the traps that would jump from the dark corners of the path to cripple our feet and confuse our confident, stupid steps.
    But Sophie is pleased with the photographs, and with the album itself, still in reasonably good condition, its ivory satiny cover not much discoloured, the photographs themselves still miraculously crisp and glossy behind their protective tissue. I suspect she is amused by certain details — my hair, for instance, starched and curled like some extravagant origami project, and the bridesmaids’ dresses. These things date, after all. But she is satisfied with my dress, which was classic and elegant. Stylish, that was the word my mother used of it. At least I avoided the meringue syndrome.
    â€˜You