DESPITE THE late addition of chopped fresh mint to a blend of melted chocolate, egg yolk, coconut milk, rum, gin, crushed banana and icing sugar, the cocktail was not particularly refreshing. Appetites already cloyed by the night’s heat were further diminished. Nearly all the adults entering the airless dining room were nauseated by the prospect of a roast dinner, or even roast meat with salad, and would have been content with a glass of cool water. But water was available only to the children, while the rest were to revive themselves with a dessert wine at room temperature. Three bottles stood ready opened on the table—in Jack Tallis’s absence Betty usually made an inspired guess. None of the three tall windows would open because their frames had warped long ago, and an aroma of warmed dust from the Persian carpet rose to meet the diners as they entered. One comfort was that the fishmonger’s van bringing the first course of dressed crab had broken down.

The effect of suffocation was heightened by the dark-stained paneling reaching from the floor and covering the ceiling, and by the room’s only painting, a vast canvas that hung above a fireplace unlit since its construction—a fault in the architectural drawings had left no provision for a flue or chimney. The portrait, in the style of Gainsborough, showed an aristocratic family—parents, two teenage girls and an infant, all thin-lipped, and pale as ghouls—posed before a vaguely Tuscan landscape. No one knew who these people were, but it was likely that Harry Tallis thought they would lend an impression of solidity to his household.

Emily stood at the head of the table placing the diners as they came in. She put Leon on her right, and Paul Marshall on her left. To his right Leon had Briony and the twins, while Marshall had Cecilia on his left, then Robbie, then Lola. Robbie stood behind his chair, gripping it for support, amazed that no one appeared to hear his still-thudding heart. He had escaped the cocktail, but he too had no appetite. He turned slightly to face away from Cecilia, and as the others took their places noted with relief that he was seated down among the children.

Prompted by a nod from his mother, Leon muttered a short suspended grace—For what we are about to receive—to which the scrape of chairs was the amen. The silence that followed as they settled and unfolded their napkins would easily have been dispersed by Jack Tallis introducing some barely interesting topic while Betty went around with the beef. Instead, the diners watched and listened to her as she stooped murmuring at each place, scraping the serving spoon and fork across the silver platter. What else could they attend to, when the only other business in the room was their own silence? Emily Tallis had always been incapable of small talk and didn’t much care. Leon, entirely at one with himself, lolled in his chair, wine bottle in hand, studying its label. Cecilia was lost to the events of ten minutes before and could not have composed a simple sentence. Robbie was familiar with the household and would have started something off, but he too was in turmoil. It was enough that he could pretend to ignore Cecilia’s bare arm at his side—he could feel its heat—and the hostile gaze of Briony who sat diagonally across from him. And even if it had been considered proper for children to introduce a topic, they too would have been incapable: Briony could think only of what she had witnessed, Lola was subdued both by the shock of physical assault and an array of contradictory emotions, and the twins were absorbed in a plan.

It was Paul Marshall who broke more than three minutes of asphyxiating silence. He moved back in his chair to speak behind Cecilia’s head to Robbie.

“I say, are we still on for tennis tomorrow?”

There was a two-inch scratch, Robbie noticed, from the corner of Marshall’s eye, running parallel to his nose, drawing attention to the way his features were set high up in his face, bunched up under the eyes. Only fractions of an inch kept him from cruel good looks. Instead, his appearance was absurd—the empty tract of his chin was at the expense of a worried, overpopulated forehead. Out of politeness, Robbie too had moved back in his seat to hear the remark, but even in his state he flinched. It was inappropriate, at the beginning of the meal, for Marshall to turn away from his hostess and begin a private conversation.

Robbie said tersely, “I suppose we are,” and then, to make amends for him, added for general consideration, “Has England ever been hotter?”

Leaning away from the field of Cecilia’s body warmth, and averting his eyes from Briony’s, he found himself pitching the end of his question into the frightened gaze of Pierrot diagonally to his left. The boy gaped, and struggled, as he might in the classroom, with a test in history. Or was it geography? Or science?

Briony leaned over Jackson to touch Pierrot’s shoulder, all the while keeping her eyes on Robbie. “Please leave him alone,” she said in a forceful whisper, and then to the little boy, softly, “You don’t have to answer.”

Emily spoke up from her end of the table. “Briony, it was a perfectly bland remark about the weather. You’ll apologize, or go now to your room.”

Whenever Mrs. Tallis exercised authority in the absence of her husband, the children felt obliged to protect her from seeming ineffectual. Briony, who in any case would not have left her sister undefended, lowered her head and said to the tablecloth, “I’m very sorry. I wish I hadn’t said it.”

The vegetables in lidded serving dishes, or on platters of faded Spode, were passed up and down, and such was the collective inattention or the polite desire to conceal a lack of appetite that most ended with roast potatoes and potato salad, Brussels sprouts and beetroot, and lettuce leaves foundering in gravy.

“The Old Man’s not going to be too pleased,” Leon said as he got to his feet. “It’s a 1921 Barsac, but it’s open now.” He filled his mother’s glass, then his sister’s and Marshall’s, and when he was standing by Robbie he said, “And a healing draft for the good doctor. I want to hear about this new plan.”

But he did not wait for a reply. On his way back to his seat he said, “I love England in a heat wave. It’s a different country. All the rules change.”

Emily Tallis picked up her knife and fork and everyone did likewise.

Paul Marshall said, “Nonsense. Name a single rule that changes.”

“All right. At the club the only place one’s allowed to remove one’s jacket is the billiard room. But if the temperature reaches ninety degrees before three o’clock, then jackets can be taken off in the upstairs bar the following day.”

“The following day! A different country indeed.”

“You know what I mean. People are more at ease—a couple of days’ sunshine and we become Italians. Last week in Charlotte Street they were eating dinner at pavement tables.”

“It was always the view of my parents,” Emily said, “that hot weather encouraged loose morals among young people. Fewer layers of clothing, a thousand more places to meet. Out of doors, out of control. Your grandmother especially was uneasy when it was summer. She would dream up a thousand reasons to keep my sisters and me in the house.”

“Well then,” Leon said. “What do you think, Cee? Have you behaved even worse than usual today?”

All eyes were on her, and the brotherly banter was relentless.

“Good heavens, you’re blushing. The answer must be yes.”

Sensing that he should step in for her, Robbie started to say, “Actually . . .”

But Cecilia spoke up. “I’m awfully hot, that’s all. And the answer is yes. I behaved very badly. I persuaded Emily against her will that we should have a roast in your honor, regardless of the weather. Now you’re sticking to salad while the rest of us are suffering because of you. So pass him the vegetables, Briony, and perhaps he’ll pipe down.”

Robbie thought he heard a tremor in her voice.

“Good old Cee. Top form,” Leon said.

Marshall said, “That’s put you in your place.”

“I suppose I’d better pick on someone smaller.” Leon smiled at Briony by his side. “Have you done something bad today on account of the terrible heat? Have you broken the rules? Please tell us you have.” He took her hand in mock-beseeching, but she pulled it away.

She was still a child, Robbie thought, not beyond confessing or blurting out that she had read his note, which in turn could lead her to describe what she had interrupted. He was watching her closely as she played for time, taking her napkin, dabbing her lips, but he felt no particular dread. If it had to, let it happen. However appalling, the dinner would not last forever, and he would find a way to be with Cecilia again that night, and together they would confront the extraordinary new fact in their lives—their changed lives—and resume. At the thought, his stomach plunged. Until that time, everything was shadowy irrelevance and he was afraid of nothing. He took a deep pull of the sugary lukewarm wine and waited.

Briony said, “It’s boring of me, but I’ve done nothing wrong today.”

He had underestimated her. The emphasis could only have been intended for him and her sister.

Jackson at her elbow spoke out. “Oh yes you have. You wouldn’t let there be a play. We wanted to be in the play.” The boy looked around the table, his green eyes shining with the grievance. “And you said you wanted us to.”

His brother was nodding. “Yes. You wanted us to be in it.” No one could know the extent of their disappointment.

“There, you see,” Leon said. “Briony’s hotheaded decision. On a cooler day we’d be in the library watching the theatricals now.”

These harmless inanities, far preferable to silence, allowed Robbie to retreat behind a mask of amused attention. Cecilia’s left hand was cupped above her cheek, presumably to exclude him from her peripheral vision. By appearing to listen to Leon who was now recounting his glimpse of the King in a West End theater, Robbie was able to contemplate her bare arm and shoulder, and while he did so he thought she could feel his breath on her skin, an idea which stirred him. At the top of her shoulder was a little dent, scalloped in the bone, or suspended between two bones, with a fuzz of shadow along its rim. His tongue would soon trace the oval of this rim and push into the hollow. His excitement was close to pain and sharpened by the pressure of contradictions: she was familiar like a sister, she was exotic like a lover; he had always known her, he knew nothing about her; she was plain, she was beautiful; she was capable—how easily she protected herself against her brother—and twenty minutes ago she had wept; his stupid letter repelled her but it unlocked her. He regretted it, and he exulted in his mistake. They would be alone together soon, with more contradictions—hilarity and sensuousness, desire and fear at their recklessness, awe and impatience to begin. In an unused room somewhere on the second floor, or far from the house, beneath the trees by the river. Which? Mrs. Tallis’s mother was no fool. Outdoors. They would wrap themselves in the satin darkness and begin again. And this was no fantasy, this was real, this was his near future, both desirable and unavoidable. But that was what wretched Malvolio thought, whose part he had played once on the college lawn—“Nothing that can be can come between me and the full prospect of my hopes.”

Half an hour before there had been no hope at all. After Briony had disappeared into the house with his letter, he kept on walking, agonizing about turning back. Even when he reached the front door, his mind was not made up, and he loitered several minutes under the porch lamp and its single faithful moth, trying to choose the less disastrous of two poor options. It came down to this: go in now and face her anger and disgust, give an explanation which would not be accepted, and most likely be turned away—unbearable humiliation; or go home now without a word, leaving the impression that the letter was what he intended, be tortured all night and for days to come by brooding, knowing nothing of her reaction—even more unbearable. And spineless. He went over it again and it looked the same. There was no way out, he would have to speak to her. He put his hand over the bell push. Still, it remained tempting to walk away. He could write her an apology from the safety of his study. Coward! The cool porcelain was under the tip of his forefinger, and before the arguments could start around again, he made himself press it. He stood back from the door feeling like a man who had just swallowed a suicide pill—nothing to do but wait. From inside he heard steps, staccato female steps across the hall.

When she opened the door he saw the folded note in her hand. For several seconds they continued to stare at each other and neither spoke. For all his hesitation he had prepared nothing to say. His only thought was that she was even more beautiful than his fantasies of her. The silk dress she wore seemed to worship every curve and dip of her lithe body, but the small sensual mouth was held tight in disapproval, or perhaps even disgust. The house lights behind her were strong in his eyes, making it hard to read her precise expression.

Finally he said, “Cee, it was a mistake.”

“A mistake?”

Voices reached him across the hallway through the open door of the drawing room. He heard Leon’s voice, then Marshall’s. It may have been fear of interruption that caused her to step back and open the door wider for him. He followed her across the hall into the library which was in darkness, and waited by the door while she searched for the switch of a desk lamp. When it came on he pushed the door closed behind him. He guessed that in a few minutes he would be walking back across the park toward the bungalow.

“It wasn’t the version I intended to send.”

“No.”

“I put the wrong one in the envelope.”

“Yes.”

He could gauge nothing by these terse replies and he was still unable to see her expression clearly. She moved beyond the light, down past the shelves. He stepped further into the room, not quite following her, but unwilling to let her out of close range. She could have sent him packing from the front door and now there was a chance of giving an explanation before he left.

She said, “Briony read it.”

“Oh God. I’m sorry.”

He had been about to conjure for her a private moment of exuberance, a passing impatience with convention, a memory of reading the Orioli edition of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which he had bought under the counter in Soho. But this new element—the innocent child—put his lapse beyond mitigation. It would have been frivolous to go on. He could only repeat himself, this time in a whisper.

“I’m sorry . . .”

She was moving further away, toward the corner, into deeper shadow. Even though he thought she was recoiling from him, he took another couple of steps in her direction.

“It was a stupid thing. You were never meant to read it. No one was.”

Still she shrank away. One elbow was resting on the shelves, and she seemed to slide along them, as though about to disappear between the books. He heard a soft, wet sound, the kind that is made when one is about to speak and the tongue unglues from the roof of the mouth. But she said nothing. It was only then that it occurred to him that she might not be shrinking from him, but drawing him with her deeper into the gloom. From the moment he had pressed the bell he had nothing to lose. So he walked toward her slowly as she slipped back, until she was in the corner where she stopped and watched him approach. He too stopped, less than four feet away. He was close enough now, and there was just enough light, to see she was tearful and trying to speak. For the moment it was not possible and she shook her head to indicate that he should wait. She turned aside and made a steeple of her hands to enclose her nose and mouth and pressed her fingers into the corners of her eyes.

She brought herself under control and said, “It’s been there for weeks . . .” Her throat constricted and she had to pause. Instantly, he had an idea what she meant, but he pushed it away. She drew a deep breath, then continued more reflectively, “Perhaps it’s months. I don’t know. But today . . . all day it’s been strange. I mean, I’ve been seeing strangely, as if for the first time. Everything has looked different—too sharp, too real. Even my own hands looked different. At other times I seem to be watching events as if they happened long ago. And all day I’ve been furious with you—and with myself. I thought that I’d be perfectly happy never seeing you or speaking to you again. I thought you’d go off to medical school and I’d be happy. I was so angry with you. I suppose it’s been a way of not thinking about it. Rather convenient really . . .”

She gave a tense little laugh.

He said, “It?”

Until now, her gaze had been lowered. When she spoke again she looked at him. He saw only the glimmer of the whites of her eyes.

“You knew before me. Something has happened, hasn’t it? And you knew before me. It’s like being close up to something so large you don’t even see it. Even now, I’m not sure I can. But I know it’s there.”

She looked down and he waited.

“I know it’s there because it made me behave ridiculously. And you, of course . . . But this morning, I’ve never done anything like that before. Afterward I was so angry about it. Even as it was happening. I told myself I’d given you a weapon to use against me. Then, this evening, when I began to understand—well, how could I have been so ignorant about myself? And so stupid?” She started, seized by an unpleasant idea. “You do know what I’m talking about. Tell me you do.” She was afraid that there was nothing shared at all, that all her assumptions were wrong and that with her words she had isolated herself further, and he would think she was a fool.

He moved nearer. “I do. I know it exactly. But why are you crying? Is there something else?”

He thought she was about to broach an impossible obstacle and he meant, of course, someone, but she didn’t understand. She didn’t know how to answer and she looked at him, quite flummoxed. Why was she crying? How could she begin to tell him when so much emotion, so many emotions, simply engulfed her? He in turn felt that his question was unfair, inappropriate, and he struggled to think of a way of putting it right. They stared at each other in confusion, unable to speak, sensing that something delicately established might slip from them. That they were old friends who had shared a childhood was now a barrier—they were embarrassed before their former ............