A Sentimental Traitor by Michael Dobbs Page B

man whose only crime was to get his timings wrong through no fault of his own, was about to be
destroyed.

    Patricia Vaine sat by her fire, stroking the cat in her lap, listening to the spitting of beech logs. She was sipping a glass of something that was cold and white but was too
preoccupied to identify it immediately. From the kitchen came the sounds of her husband rattling the pans and plates that would soon produce their Christmas lunch. Turkey – Felix was
conventional, in some things, at least.
    She had first met Felix at Oxford. They had both been auditioning for the university drama society. He had made little impression either on her or on the casting directors, but their paths had
crossed by chance many years later in an antiques shop near Sloane Square. She had wandered in searching for a battered mirror and found him staring back at her. He’d had a serious bike
accident that had left him with a frozen spine; he moved stiffly, turned his head from his hips, looked out from the corners of his eyes, which gave him a leering aspect, but Felix and Patricia
proved to be a complement of opposites. He was urbane, she was intense, he was a cook while she was always in a hurry, he saw the colour of life while she counted the casualties, and since neither
had much desire for children their desperately orthodox sex life didn’t seem to present a problem.
    When they had married she’d kept her maiden name, not using his surname of Wilton; it gave her an additional measure of independence that she treasured, and often proved useful in her
working world of middle-aged men. How much she would come to welcome the distance that different names and lifestyles carried was brought home three years after their wedding, when she discovered
he was bisexual. The evenings when she thought he was out visiting art galleries were instead spent on a poorly lit path near Holland Park, a habit he could no longer cover up when a youth who
called himself Wayne appeared at their doorstep and demanded money. Patricia had answered the door, listened to his tale, then told him that her husband was too busy in the kitchen to be
interrupted, but if Wayne were still standing on her step in thirty seconds, she would go to the kitchen, return with a ceramic blade and cut his balls off herself. It had had the desired effect,
Wayne had vanished back into the darker recesses of the night. Patricia, educated by nuns, was the sort of woman through whom the milk of sexual tolerance flowed in only intermittent streaks, so
that evening she had moved her husband’s clothes into the spare room, and thereafter they never slept together or mentioned a word about their separate sex lives.
    Yet, in the game of spies that was so often fuelled by suspicion, Felix remained her rock. She could talk to him like no other and his advice, although instinctive rather than informed, was
sound, often saving her from her own impulsiveness. And she led her own double life, spending her working week in Brussels while returning to London or their country cottage in the folds of
Salisbury Plain most weekends. He never asked what she got up to, which was why she felt so comfortable about sharing – some things, at least.
    ‘What is it?’ she asked as he reappeared, wrapped in an apron, bending his back with care to top up her glass.
    ‘Pouilly Fuissé, a big one. Someone from the European Parliament sent it to you in return for a favour. You remember?’
    She shook her head distractedly; she did so many favours. ‘I wonder what the Prime Minister will be having?’
    ‘Not your favourite man, is he?’ Felix said.
    ‘I’m told he starts off his day with a full English, and Marmite spread thick on white toast.’
    ‘Not just the backbone of a Little Englander but the belly, too.’
    ‘Wretched halfwit,’ she muttered. She ran her finger around the rim of her glass, it let out a siren’s wail; the cat, a Norwegian Forest breed called Freya, stirred in