‘I detest the whole I’m such a bad guy spiel. It’s all about keeping “You” – the man – as the all-powerful, controlling pivot of the universe.’

‘But I feel so guilty! Can you understand that?’

He annoyed me, then, and I almost went, Naaah. You know what? Naaaah. See ya. But I sat. And I stayed. And I said: ‘You’ve got to watch guilt. It’s a tricksy one. Too often it’s just narcissism incognito.’

Why did I stay? To educate him? That’s what Kelly said: If you have a relationship with a white man you are basically running a correctional facility every fucking day, mate. But Kelly had been single longer than my mother.

Art looked at me more sadly than he knew. ‘But I worry about her …’ he said. ‘Eliza,’ he said. ‘That’s her name.’

Eliza. I know what she looks like, the particulars of her CV (downloaded as a PDF then shamefacedly deleted) (oh god would she be able to tell??). It’s funny how close you get to someone’s ex via the internet and the sexual hangover. I knew from the way Art and I had sex, at the start, the things Eliza liked. Before we made our own impressions on each other the impressions of the past were there, like muscle memory. The tweaked nipples (SO not my bag); the I really want to fuck yous. There is something meaningful, some kind of growth, in that historical cross-pollination. He had her name tattooed across his heart. I never asked him to remove it, but it was like she was there, every time he was naked. His body said her name. She was an echo in the room. A tracer on the light of our love.

Back to Egypt.

I said: ‘Have you considered the small possibility that Eliza is actually fine, and you might be using the whole “guilty” thing as a way of continuing to feel powerful?’

He said nothing to that.

‘You terrible cad,’ I went on. ‘You rotter, you rogue. Leaving a poor helpless woman all alone in this krewl werld. And no, no, don’t tell me, you’ve done it hundreds of times before, haven’t you? There’s a frothy wake of broken hearts behind you, trailing around the globe, isn’t there?’ His mouth was half open and he was shocked, shocked-laughing. He pushed his fingertip into my shoulder, but I wasn’t deterred. I was on a fucking roll. ‘Go visit a prison, or even better, a bank,’ I said. ‘Then you’ll meet some truly bad men. You’re just some middle-class pusskin who’s watched too many box sets.’

He looked at me like he wanted to kill me. Then his face changed. He said: ‘I see you, hipster.’ He smiled sweetly. ‘I see you, with your piecemeal personality and your dietary restrictions and your General Pinochet T-shirt.’