Spirals of steam snaked from the bathtub. A pale foot hung over the copper rim bouncing up and down to a silent beat. The heat clouded Edith in a fine mist, like a figure from a dream. Her hair was piled on top of her head; the odd tendril had escaped, dispatching droplets of moisture down her slender neck and out of view. Her eyes were shut; the pale lashes casting long shadows across her pink cheeks.

Anthony enjoyed playing voyeur from the bed. He shook his head, still taken aback at his own extraordinary good luck. It was a miracle that a woman like this had deigned even to be his friend, let alone the rest of it.

"You're beautiful."

Her mouth quirked. She kept her eyes shut, "you're spying."

"What am I supposed to do?! The bathtub is in the bedroom - which is in the living room - which is in the kitchen."

She opened one eye and trained it on him. He'd propped himself up on one arm surrounded by clouds of thick duvet, blatantly looking at her.

She shut her eye again, lips forming into a slight smile, "you could turn the other way."

"No. I couldn't."

There was an almost imperceptible shake of the head. A few weeks ago he'd have missed it, but he knew her now - Edith struggled with compliments, to put it mildly. After last night she'd have to get used to them.

"Right Crawley, fair warning: I cannot just lie here any more." He swung his legs out of the bed and stretched to his toes.

"What do you mean?"

"I'm going to the toilet, brushing my teeth and then I'm getting into that bath with you."

"Oh." She pulled her cheek between her teeth, eyes scanning the length of his naked body in a fashion he suspected she thought was subtle; it was not.

"I'm just a piece of meat to you aren't I?"

"No! I was just –" She shrugged, "looking. I don't know. You're handsome, and very –" she gestured nondescriptly and then settled on a word, "big."

He waggled his eyebrows, "Big?"

"Oh, you know what I mean - masculine!" She flicked water in his direction, "Stop teasing me!"

It was a thoroughly inelegant exercise clambering into the tub, she leaned forward and he slipped in underneath her. The water waxed and waned perilously but they managed, just about, to stop it from escaping onto the floor. The water felt good, Edith's soft skin lying on top of him felt even better.

He kissed the freckles behind her ear, "good morning."

She craned her neck to catch his lips, "hello."

"Gosh, you feel nice." He brushed the underside of her breast, a tentative finger, back and forth. It wasn't a sexual touch, neither was the hand on her stomach. He wanted to cherish, to marvel, to show her exactly what last night had meant to him.

Her head lolled on his shoulder, eyes shut, "I'm just lying here."

"You're never just anything, sweet one, not to me. Particularly not when we're skin to skin." Anthony didn't think he had a mawkish bone left in his body but he hummed a few bars of Cheek to Cheek and before he knew it he was singing in her ear, "Heaven, I'm in heaven –"

She laughed, the vibrations of her chest travelled through to his, clumsily she put her hand to his mouth, "stop, please, it's too cheesy I can't take it."

"Charming! At least shut me up by kissing me?!" She caught his bottom lip and almost immediately pulled away, slender fingers covering her eyes.

"Edith?"

"Mary came to lunch yesterday."

"Oh?"

She swirled circles in the white bubbles atop the water, "we rowed, nothing new about that." A laugh crept from her mouth, but she wasn't amused. "I was spiteful and she -" her voice cracked in the back of her throat.

"What sweet one?"

"You don't have to pretend you know. The bath and the singing and the kisses. If this was just about sex, that's fine. You can go, you don't have to stay and pretend -"

"Stop. Stop that now. I'm not pretending and you know I'm not. What did Mary say?"

"That my life is small - little, to be precise - compared to hers." Abruptly Edith sat up and turned, the violence of the movement laid waste to his earlier care, water sloshed onto the floor, "and she's right, isn't she? She's saving people from prison. Sybil saved women from getting stoned to death in Iran. You did the same kind of things. Now you make the decision whether to send people to prison. I'm nothing compared to all that, I just paint inconsequential pictures. God you must be so bored!"

Her hands shook, her whole body shook. He pulled her back down to his chest, "listen to me Edith Crawley. I am not bored, not in the slightest. I am not pretending. You are not inconsequential, neither are your pictures. You are not nothing." He whispered low in her ear, "but you don't need me to tell you these things Edith, you taught me that art was important and literature and film and television. You were right about that. I'm - I'm a more complete person for knowing you. Mary can defend a thousand guilty men but it's worth nothing to her if she forgets to live as a consequence."

She exhaled an uneven breath into his chest and some of the tension left her shoulders, "Sorry."

"Nothing to be sorry for." He wanted to make Mary Crawley sorry for it though. She was going to feel the full wrath of his judicial influence if she ever had the misfortune of appearing in front of him again. No submission would go unattacked, no technical rule breach unnoticed.

"She knows exactly the buttons to push with me. I thought I could let it go, but I woke up this morning to a beautiful man in my bed and wondered why on earth he'd chosen to be there."

"There was another man in the bed this morning?!" She chuckled, a pity laugh for a pitiful joke, but her lips curved up and he was inordinately pleased he could still make her smile. "Honestly, sweet one, I woke up this morning and saw you in this tub and I had pretty much the same thought about you. I can't rid you of your insecurities but I can at least comfort you with the fact that you're not alone in them."

They had slow, lazy sex once they were out of the bath, careful not to get too sweaty after getting clean. Anthony also wanted to take his time, to touch, to explore, to show, to prove to Edith what this meant, what she meant. If her life was little it hadn't stopped it enveloping him.

Edith painted whilst Anthony read, or pretended to read, his eyes kept sliding off the page and up to her instead. It was as if the image melted from her mind onto the canvas, strokes of seemingly random colour and then, suddenly, there was the start of a picture: dancing figures in a vaulted hall. She troubled her bottom lip with her teeth as she worked, occasionally her tongue darted out, pressing at the edge of her lips, furrowed lines of concentration etching her forehead. The sight was equal parts mesmerising and arousing.

The rest of the morning was spent wandering through Brixton. The outdoor market followed the curve of a road running through two perfect Victorian terraces. Edith bought grips and bands for her hair, because, she explained, no matter how many of them she purchased over her lifetime they would disappear to some untraceable location and she'd be left without any. She persuaded him to buy scented candles for his flat, not that he took much persuading, it was more that she suggested it and he agreed, just to see her smile.

All the food was indoors. A ramshackle selection of stalls under a dirty glass roof. Myriad colours, all primary or neon, nothing subtle. The building had just been listed, preserved for posterity, considered just as important for British heritage as St Pauls, or the British Museum or Temple Church. To Anthony Brixton was a place of violence. His very first client had come from there, a young man of eighteen caught up in the rioting with no hope and no future. Without even realising it Anthony had tarnished the whole place with that memory, a desolate, angry young man who must have come from a desolate, angry place. Perhaps it had been then, but it wasn't any more. It was full of life. He wondered just how many things, people and places he'd written off as a result of his career.

They meandered side-by-side, bumping shoulders and brushing hands. Secret lovers in a public place.

Anthony stopped to pick out meat and vegetables. He would take the responsibility for feeding them because Edith's face was pure joy when she was enjoying something. She proclaimed a love for plantain. He'd never heard of plantain so he waved her off and took some robust cooking instructions from the store holder. He was a middle aged black man with an unpronounceable name who slapped Anthony so hard on the back he nearly toppled over and laughed saying 'call me Ollie!'

After 'call me Ollie' had finished. Anthony trailed through the market looking for Edith, he found her only a couple of stalls over. She had two brightly coloured pashminas wrapped around her neck and was in deep conversation with the proprietor, who had two further bolts of fabric draped over her arm. Edith laughed at something being said, bobbing back on the balls of her feet and pushing her hair away from her face. He loved to look at her, he was hungry for it, greedy, really, because his appetite would never be sated.

Edith unfurled one of the scarves from around her neck and waved him over in the process, "Which one should I get?"

"They're all lovely."

"That's no help."

"Get them all."

"I can't afford it."

"I can." He fished around in his pocket for his wallet.

Edith's hand went to his wrist. Remarkable that even though he'd touched her so intimately he could still be affected by such simple contact. His skin prickled under her soft fingers and his heart raced a little faster.

"You can't buy these for me."

"I just bought food for you."

"Yes, but you'll be eating that as well."

"Perhaps I'll want to borrow the scarves."

Edith tilted her head and pursed her lips in a thoroughly delectable manner, he was tempted to run his thumb over them, perhaps slip it inside, "The lilac one with the pink bird pattern would look very fetching with your colouring."

"I think so."

She pinched his arm, "Anthony, be serious."

He wanted to pinch her lovely bottom in retort but he resisted, "Sweet one, a few scarves are not going to bankrupt me, I promise. You want them, I want to buy them for you, it's so easy for you to make us both happy."

She shifted the soft fabric from one hand to the other as if literally weighing her options, "alright then."

The proprietor beamed a gleeful smile, pleased to have made a sale. She took the scarf from Edith's neck. She folded the fabric into neat rectangles, "it's only right that he treats you, what else are husbands for?"

"Oh, I -"

"We're –"

They both started to correct the impression and each stopped in the wake of the other. Edith looked up at him and he looked down at her. She didn't continue and neither did he. He was happy to let this shopkeeper think he belonged only to Edith. The justice system, the court service, the judicial hierarchy, the government and Maud all fell away in a moment of mistaken fiction created by the mind of a stranger. In this place and at this time he was only for Edith.

Edith took the bag of scarves he'd bought for her, "ready to go home, or, back to mine, that is?"

"Yes."

They walked in silence for a while, "thank you for the scarves."

"Thank you for letting me buy them."

She pursed her lips and shook her head, "it was terribly difficult for me, but I think I'll survive the trauma of it." She looked at him, solemn, before breaking into a broad smile. The breeze took her hair across her face and she brushed it away. Anthony considered pulling her into his arms and nuzzling at her neck. Amidst the scores of people roaming around them he couldn't make his hands reach for her.

A cynic might have assumed he was worried about getting caught, a married man cavorting with a woman who wasn't his wife. In truth, he was afraid to play further with Edith's affection. Afraid to draw her further into the web of a life he'd tangled up so thoroughly.

Anthony knew that they would end, that they must end eventually and when they did he would not be the man he was before. Life would go on, of course, he would go to the High Court and wear his robes, sit in judgment, attend dinners, give seminars, lecture, make forays into academic literature. He and Maud would probably be together again, mutually supportive partners. In all those ways everything would be exactly the same. But there would be a fissure straight through the centre of him, a hairline fracture never to be healed; a burden he was destined always to bear. He didn't want that for her. She was young and she could be free of it when it was over, left with just fond memories of a fling she had with some old judge she painted.