It used to be pink and white until she wrote on the wall in fat marker pen, “Sam Loves Anthony”, in big black letters. Only grey paint would cover the mess.
“My mum was really angry when I did that,” she says “Anthony was my boyfriend from primary school He was two-timing me with my friend. Then he chucked me because I wouldn’t kiss him.”She shares the room with Danielle, and there is just enough space for their two single beds, side by side. Under the window is Sam’s stereo, a television and video player. The family has satellite TV and four televisions – one for every bedroom, and one in the lounge.Sam has a selection of favourite videos tapes: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Honey I Shrunk the Kids, Teen Wolf, Beauty and the Beast and The Sound of Music, which she and Danielle once watched five times in a row.At the age of 11, she seems to be a fully paid-up member of the modern dance culture She enjoys house, pure swing, garage and gangsta rap A toy box, also in the room, seems sadly depleted. “I don’t have many cuddly toys any more,” she explains – Rufus, the family dog, a cross between a boxer and Staffordshire bull terrier, has chewed most of them up.The photographs on the walls include snapshots taken when she and her sister have been on their annual holiday to the countryside, organised by the single parents’ charity, Gingerbread.Her builder father, who split up with Tracey when Danielle was only months old, sees them irregularly.

I also told him that during the Italian referendum on divorce in 1974 one of the arguments against divorce put forward by some intellectuals was that it would change the nature of affairs I tried to make him laugh. You’d never know if your mistress wasn’t planning to become your second wife!But visions of such consummate convenience leave little scope for myth and misery Alistair had been in love with Chiara He had given his heart. He told Alistair that every family was also a business, or hacienda, as the Spanish say, a family estate, a place where people share the jobs that have to be done.Is such advice merely cynical? Or, in a very profound way, romantic? Old campaigners. Discussing it with Alistair after he had put in a decidedly lacklustre performance on the squash court, I felt it wise to agree with the analyst – at least about the ingenuousness of imagining that things would be better next time.

Meanwhile, he might remember that he had an ongoing project with his wife They were old campaigners Think of the practical side Think of your professional life. Why should they be? Was there anything intrinsically unsuitable about his wife, anything intrinsically right about his mistress? Alistair’s problems sprang from his Anglo-Saxon puritan upbringing, from the fact that he’d never been unfaithful before. This had led him to attach undue significance to the sentimental side of his new relationship in order to justify the betrayal of values – monogamy, integrity – that would not bear examination. He had “mythicised” it.What he must do now was take a few mild tranquillisers, settle down, and have another affair at the first opportunity, being careful to attach no more sentimental importance to it than an affair was worth – some, but not much And keep it brief.