The woman lets him down. She’s still twenty yards away and Adam hasn’t taken her in. He’s more interested in Freddie, who runs down the slope and hugs him.

  ‘Where have you been, you little monster?’ he says, lifting Freddie up in his arms.

  ‘I found him over there,’ the woman says, turning to look back up the hill as she comes over to join them. ‘He seemed lost, so I was bringing him back down to the playground, where he said his mother was.’

  Adam swallows. He knows that voice, even though he hasn’t heard it for more than twenty years. He would recognise it anywhere, its raspy, textured tone shot through with the faintest of French accents. For a second he avoids looking up, but then he lifts his gaze.

  It’s Clio, the woman who broke his heart at Cambridge and has haunted his dreams ever since. Older, of course, but just as he remembers her: short, cropped hair, high cheekbones and such big eyes, black as the leather jacket she’s wearing.

  ‘Adam?’ she says, seemingly as surprised as he is. ‘Oh my God, it is you.’

  ‘Clio?’ Adam clutches Freddie’s hand a little tighter. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’

  ‘Just passing through,’ she says, her voice returning to a lazy drawl. ‘Friends in Blackheath, you know? How about you?’

  ‘I live here – over there.’ He waves in the direction of their house on Maze Hill. He remembers the frisson of danger he used to feel whenever he was in the same room as Clio. He feels it again now: fear mixed with something else, more adrenaline than excitement, as if her empowered sexuality is some kind of primal challenge. Call yourself a man?

  ‘How incredible,’ she says. ‘Freddie’s a lovely little boy. Now I know why.’

  Adam shakes his head in disbelief, a blur of unfaithful emotions coursing through him. Is Clio married? Has she got children herself? Where’s she been all these years? He checks himself.

  ‘You must come and meet my wife, Tania,’ he says, glancing guiltily at her left hand. No wedding ring. ‘She’ll be so pleased to meet you. To thank you for finding Freddie.’

  3

  Cambridge,

  May 1998

  The big news is that the last night went well. Despite my intense misgivings – as already confided to these pages – I didn’t fluff any of my lines and even Clio seemed impressed. The audience too. There was a stunned silence at the end of the play, when Doctor Faustus is dragged down to hell by demons. No forgiveness, no redemption for a man fired by hubris and his lust for limitless knowledge. Just a brutal, shocking conclusion to the deal he’d struck with the devil: a lifetime of power and pleasure in return for his soul. Lucifer and Mephistopheles… I gave them my soul for my cunning.

  As ever, though, my mind went blank when Clio came round for a chat afterwards in the dressing room. I’d just spent two hours on stage, exchanging some of the most memorable lines in English literature with her Mephistopheles – Was this the face that launched a thousand ships/And burnt the topless towers of Ilium? – but when the curtain came down, I was tongue-tied. Again. Couldn’t string two bloody words together. Articulate on stage as Doctor Faustus, a mumbling wreck as aspiring Doctor Adam the moment I came off. Am I really so awkward around women that I can’t even talk? I thought acting might help make me more confident. Medicine, too. After all, surgeons and actors have a lot in common – big egos, both work in a ‘theatre’, boom-boom.

  Anyway, there I was in the ADC Bar tonight for the after-show, feeling out of my depth surrounded by aspiring thesps, not to mention the ghosts of all those famous ADC alumni – Ian McKellen, Derek Jacobi, Simon Russell Beale, the Monty Python set. Given such a high hit rate, there’s a fair chance that some of the people who were at the party this evening will be the famous names of tomorrow. Not me, that’s for sure. That sense of anticipation, of career expectation, causes too much looking over people’s shoulders for my liking. Having said that, I know we’ll see Clio’s name in lights one day, maybe in film rather than theatre. Everyone thinks so, not just me.

  It was pretty raucous at the bar. The Deptford Society, who produced the play, was paying for drinks, and people were filling their boots. Clio was further down the bar and, emboldened by the free beer, I couldn’t take my eyes off her. You’d have thought I’d have done enough of that on stage, sharing nearly all my scenes with her, but no. I’ve never seen anyone like Clio, her blatant femininity, the heightened sense of intimacy you feel in her company, the way she leans in close to you when she speaks, as if you’re the only person who matters to her. Though that probably says more about my limited love-life back home in Cornwall. She seems so at ease with her own body, comfortable in her skin without ever appearing vain.

  ‘Your tongue will fall off if it hangs out any further.’

  It was Louis, standing next to me at the bar and dressed from head to toe in black: black T-shirt, battered long black leather jacket and torn black jeans. He’s a bit of a star is Louis, a mature student already hailed as a groundbreaking director at uni – an auteur, the next big thing in film. He’s certainly got something, an aura of creativity that draws people into his circle, including Clio. Money too. There’s little evidence that Louis has ever had to suffer for his art. Eton-educated, he’s one of those people who go out of their way to cover up their privilege. Take the yellow-stitch Doc Martens boots he always wears: scuffed, unpolished, a calculated rejection of the shiny brogues he no doubt sported at school. He even had the luxury of choosing where to do his PhD: Oxford and Cambridge both made him offers, apparently. Rumour has it he tossed a coin.

  He looked from my face to hers and back again. I’d seen him around with Clio, exchanged occasional nods, but we’d never actually spoken to each other before and I blushed, taking refuge in my pint of Doom Bar.

  ‘That obvious?’ I managed to say.

  It was a toss-up between walking away or fessing up to my embarrassing infatuation. Was my tongue really hanging out? Ouch. I wanted the ground to swallow me up, particularly as I’ve always suspected that he and Clio might be an item.

  ‘You’re in good company.’

  Louis raised a small camcorder to his eye. A Sony Handycam. I watched him pan it across the crowded bar, as if it was the most natural thing in the world to do. No one appeared to react or even notice – Louis was seldom seen without his camcorder – but then the camera settled on Clio. Instinctively, she seemed to know. She turned and scowled, eyes narrowing, chin raised in smouldering defiance.

  ‘She’s a natural in front of the camera, isn’t she?’ Louis whispered, still looking through the lens. ‘The best movie stars never blink.’

  I couldn’t think of what to say, mesmerised by Clio’s response to the camera, the way she stared back at Louis. Her gaze was fixed – unblinking, just as he said. After a few seconds, he lowered the camcorder and ordered a vodka and lime. Clio turned away, as if in victory. Louis wasn’t a member of the cast or crew and had to pay for his drink. Technically, he shouldn’t have been there at all, as it was a private party, but I assumed Clio had invited him. Most hosts would let him in anyway, just to add a bit of cred to their party. I had time to look at him properly as he waited for his vodka. His pale face was sharp-edged and angular, like a bird of prey’s, his lips almost feminine, defined by a pronounced Cupid’s bow.

  ‘You were good tonight,’ he said, after his vodka had arrived. ‘Very good.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Clio was the star.’

  ‘Isn’t she always?’ He pulled out a bag of tobacco. ‘It’s a great play. One day I’d like to shoot the film. A modern take on the original Faustian pact. Not literal, you understand, and without any of the low comedy scenes.’

  ‘No boxing popes round the ear, then?’

  ‘Just the important bits.’

  ‘Which are…?’

  I was keen to hear his take on Doctor Faustus. Our version stuck pretty closely to Marlowe’s text, but the story is so rich in human insight, it’s ripe for reinterpretation. Faustus, an ambitious but frustrated academic, craves a deeper knowledge of the universe, turns to magic – necromancy – and conjures up the demon Mephistopheles, Lucifer’s agent. They strike a deal: Faustus can have infinite knowledge and power in return for giving his soul to Lucifer – in twenty-four years’ time. The way I played it, Faustus doesn’t really believe that the devil will come calling: the date of reckoning is just too far ahead to be of concern. Ironically, though, he’s unsure what to do with his new-found power, frittering it away on practical jokes on the pope and lusting after Helen of Troy. But when the date finally approaches, he panics at the prospect of eternal damnation. The incessant pain! He doesn’t repent, though, despite being given every opportunity, and when he calls out to Christ to save him, it’s too late. By the end of the play, he’s certainly discovered more about the world and himself: human pride comes at a hideous price, limitless power is overrated, and free will is illusory. In true Calvinist fashion, Faustus was damned from the day he was born.

  I watched Louis lick a Rizla paper and finish rolling his ciggy. He didn’t seem in a hurry to offer his own interpretation.

  ‘I first heard of the play as a child,’ I said, filling the silence. ‘When I spotted “Doctor Faustus” carved into one of the concrete seats at the Minack, an open-air theatre not far from Land’s End.’

  ‘The Minack?’ Louis said, looking up. ‘Know it well.’

  ‘You do?’ I was surprised. ‘My dad took me there far too young to watch King Lear. It’s where I caught the acting bug.’

  Louis smiled. ‘A good place for Lear to rage in a storm. And Doctor Faustus.’

  ‘Ninteen sixty-seven – that was the date of the performance on the seat.’

  I didn’t add that when I was a tearaway teenager returning to port after a week of fishing at sea I used to see the evening lights of the theatre shining out into the night sky from the cliffs and fantasise about being on stage rather than on deck.

  ‘It’s a play about the folly of human ambition,’ Louis said, cutting into my memories. ‘In many ways, Faustus was the ultimate over-reacher – and prepared to do anything, even sign away his own soul, to achieve his goals, to gratify his desires.’ He lit up. ‘We all make them, you know, in our different ways,’ he continued, throwing back his head to exhale. ‘Deals with the devil to get what we want, shameful trade-offs that come back to bite us. Faustian pacts.’ He held my eye. ‘Every day we wrestle with good and bad impulses. And at the end of our lives, the ledger of our actions, the decisions we’ve taken, must balance, as Doctor Faustus discovered.’

  I was about to show off, say something about the clash of Renaissance and Medieval world views, when a student squeezed past and kissed Louis on the cheek. I moved aside awkwardly as the two men chatted, Louis’ back to me. And then another student approached the bar. He had distinctive auburn hair and a light dusting of freckles, but he was not someone I recognised. For a second, I flattered myself that he had been waiting to congratulate me on my performance as Doctor Faustus. But he seemed nervous, shooting a furtive glance in Louis’ direction. I could hardly hear his voice above the noise of the crowd, but his words were audible enough to shock me.

  ‘Don’t have anything to do with that guy or his films,’ he said. ‘Trust me, I mean it. He’s not just a bad person.’ He looked around the bar again and leant in close. ‘He’s evil.’

  4

  ‘So you were at uni with Adam,’ Tania says as she blends a fruit smoothie in their new, brushed-metal and marble kitchen. She insisted on inviting Clio back to the house, wanted to thank her for finding Freddie, and they have already exchanged numbers. Adam can’t think of a less likely liaison, but they seem to have hit it off. It’s as if Clio’s arrival in the house has energised Tania, woken her up from her stupor in the park. Maybe it’s just him who’s the problem.

  ‘We didn’t know each other very well,’ Clio says. Not for want of trying on Adam’s part. She is outside the open back door, smoking a cigarette. Is she playing down their relationship at uni, to avoid any awkwardness with Tania? ‘Until my last term,’ she adds, glancing at Adam, who’s still in his running gear.

  Tania hates cigarette smoke, particularly when the children are around, but for some reason it doesn’t seem to be a problem today. Freddie is upstairs in his room and Tilly is asleep in her pram in the hallway. It wouldn’t surprise Adam if she even had a drag of Clio’s cigarette.

  ‘I was an aspiring actor in those days,’ Adam says, fixing Clio a black coffee – she turned down a healthy smoothie. ‘Played a rather bad Doctor Faustus opposite Clio’s wildly acclaimed Mephistopheles.’

  ‘Hey, you were great.’ Clio exhales theatrically.

  ‘Hardly,’ Adam says. The reviews, which he can still remember word for word, were OK – a workmanlike, perfectly serviceable Faustus – but it was Clio who stole the show with her modern Mephistopheles. Clad in black leather trousers and jacket, she made a very good servant to Lucifer, doing the devil’s work as she realised Faustus’s increasingly frivolous wishes. Another Cambridge star is born.

  ‘I thought Mephistopheles was a man,’ Tania says.

  ‘We were ahead of our time,’ Adam replies, relaxing a little. ‘It was a very gender-fluid production.’

  ‘I’ve never liked the use of gender and fluid together in that phrase,’ Clio says, stubbing out her cigarette. She walks back into the kitchen, staring at one of Tania’s rotas stuck on the fridge door. ‘Takes things in the wrong direction.’

  Oh God. Adam concentrates on making the coffee. Tania won’t enjoy this conversation if Clio gets earthy. Tania’s world is clean, like their kitchen. Efficient and wholesome. Maybe that’s been the problem. She hasn’t given in to the mayhem of motherhood, waved a white flag and let chaos reign. Easy enough for him to say. He’s always been messy, drives Tania mad with his piles of stuff left around the house. At work, he’s more organised, which irritates Tania even more.

  ‘I’ve never thought of it like that,’ Tania says, laughing as she opens the fridge door.

  ‘Whoa, what are those?’ Clio asks, peering inside the fridge. Adam looks over at the two women. Tania must be a good foot taller. Clio points to a row of plastic boxes arranged neatly on two shelves, each one labelled with a different food item: ‘Strawberries’, ‘Cucumbers’, ‘Apples’, ‘Snacks’.

  ‘They’re for Freddie’s lunchbox.’ Tania holds the door open. ‘He chooses his own food – a sort of DIY Meal Deal. Better chance of him eating it all – at least that’s the theory. Adam thinks I’ve lost it.’

  ‘Not true,’ Adam says. They’ve learnt to demarcate their roles in the kitchen and Freddie’s lunchbox has always been her domain, despite it involving children and food. He’s the foodie, and early on in their marriage they agreed that he would do all the cooking if she washed up. He used to try and clean up afterwards too – he’s a good but spectacularly messy cook – but always fell short of her impeccable standards.

  ‘That’s so cool,’ Clio says, looking at the labelled boxes. ‘My mother used to spoil me with dark chocolate truffles.’

  Outside on the street, after they’ve finished their smoothies and coffee, Tania waves Clio goodbye and thanks her again for retrieving Freddie.

  ‘Let’s go for a walk in the park, next time you’re visiting your friends in Blackheath,’ Tania adds. ‘Text me.’

  ‘Sure,’ Clio says. ‘I’d like that.’

  Adam tries not to shake his head in disbelief.

  ‘I’ll just walk Clio down to the station. Back in a bit,’ he says, failing to sound casual. His mind is still buzzing, trying to process Clio’s arrival today. And work out why the hell his wife is being so nice to her. Topsy-Turvy Tania.

  ‘How have you been keeping, anyway?’ he asks Clio as they head down Maze Hill. ‘Still acting?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ Clio says, turning away.

  He’s surprised. When she left uni in 1998, the internet was in its infancy: Friends Reunited and Facebook had yet to be invented. He searched online everywhere for Clio – all he had was a postal address in France – and regularly trawled the expanding internet in the years that followed, expecting to see her name in Hollywood, but he couldn’t find her. Not a trace. Girlfriends came and went, but it was only when he met Tania that he finally accepted that Clio had gone, the dull ache for what might have been replaced by a more realistic nostalgia.

  ‘I went back to live in France with my mother,’ Clio continues. ‘She was… unwell, needed looking after. We’re very close. When she was better, I travelled the world for a while before returning to France to be her full-time carer. She’s not ill, just old, needs help around the house. I promised myself she’d never go into a care home, even though she can afford it. Sometimes we get a helper when I come over to the UK.’ She pauses. ‘To see friends.’

  It’s not the path Adam expected Clio to follow, but he’s impressed by her filial devotion. She could have done anything in life. Born to an English mother who wrote literary novels and an often absent French father who was a successful stage actor, she grew up in a bright, bohemian world. The Lycée International school in Paris was followed by Cambridge, where she’d been a brilliant actor herself and sailed through her English degree.

  ‘I tried to stay in touch,’ he says, ‘wrote you a few letters.’

  At least twenty, maybe more.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You got them?’ he asks, blushing as he tries to recall what he wrote. The bad love poems. The quotations from DoctorFaustus comparing Clio to Helen of Troy: Here will I dwell, for heaven be in these lips. Oh God. He stopped writing to her when he met Tania.

  She nods. ‘I read them too.’

  And never replied to any of them. Clio was always out of his league, but for a few days in the spring of her last year at Cambridge she had allowed him to dream. He takes a deep breath, not sure whether to ask his next question.