CHAPTER ONE It was going to be one of Kate s bad mornings. Matthew knew it as soon as he woke up and saw her sitting on the edge of her bed, gripping it as if it were a life raft, while she stared into the distance as if she had seen smoke on the horizon which might promise her rescue. But the bedroom curtains, in a yellow and white pattern that she and Mat- thew had once c~sen together, were all that she could see. Dull daylight s~ped through the curtains. It fell on her tense face, faintly oily from the cream that she had rubbed into it the evening before, and was reflected in her wide, dark, angry eyes. She had woken up angry, for whatever reason Matthew, as always, was unable to guess. In some way, whenever this happened, he took for granted that he was to blame, though she never told him just how or why he was. Distantly, silently, she would carry the dark secret of how he had offended her throughout the day, only, ap- parently, all of a sudden to forget it herself and become relaxed, casual, even loving. Less and less loving as time passed, ye~ it could sometimes happen still. It was all very mysterious to Matthew, and very painful. He was a man who blamed himself easily for the unhap- piness of others, a quality in himself that he had failed to recognise as a kind of egoism. In his diffident way, he saw himself as affecting other people far more potently than he actually did. Usually he tried to deal with his incom- prehensible guilt by saying nothing, showing nothing and
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