‘Me too. An apple for lunch and now two glasses of champagne.’

Now they ordered, and then Simon took her hand. ‘I wonder if I could –’

‘No. If you’re going to say what I think you’re going to say, then no. Not yet. Time.’

‘Sod time.’

‘It’s probably the most important thing of all. We have to get time right . . .’

‘This time.’

‘More than any other.’

‘Your table is ready when you are.’ As they walked into the dining room the waiter went ahead to the far end and the corner table slightly separated from its neighbours, beside the window. They looked out at the lights down the drive, the tiny lights, like glow-worms, in the bushes, and wound through the bay trees on either side of the entrance.

‘You did it!’ Rachel said. ‘Table 6.’

‘I just said if there happened to be a cancellation.’

The waiter held her chair. ‘Was there?’ she asked him.

He made a small movement of his head. ‘We like to get things right.’

‘I can’t have any more to drink,’ Serrailler said, ‘so the rest of the champagne is yours and then whatever you would like with dinner.’

‘No. At the moment I am perfectly balanced between not enough and too much.’

‘Ah, but that won’t last.’

Rachel looked at him.

This. Now. Time. Make this last.

She sat back in her chair, but went on looking.

‘I think it will,’ she said.

They were the last to leave the dining room, and there were just three people left in the bar by the time it closed at half past midnight. They drove back on empty roads, happy, in silence.

‘Come and see the house tomorrow?’

‘No, leave it a while.’

‘Why? Why leave it a while?’

‘Because. Time. Everything we said.’

‘Don’t you want to see it?’

‘If you buy it, yes, of course I do, but I’m not going to influence you.’

‘What if you hate it?’

‘Whether I do or I don’t isn’t the point.’

He was silent. The edges of the evening began to curl up and shrivel.

‘Don’t look like that, Simon. Time, remember.’ And she opened the car door.

He watched her safely into the house and drove away too fast, checked himself, went through Lafferton too slowly. If he had been Traffic he would have stopped himself, though he was very sober and very safe. But also, what? Angry? Disappointed? Deflated?

He turned into the close and looked ahead, up at the house, at his apartment. Home. Remembered when Rachel had moved into it with him and he had, not hated her being there, but been irritated with someone invading his space and changing it, making an impression on it that was new and out of his control. He had been surprised at how much he had minded and what a difference it had made to his feelings.