After they’d eaten they sat at the table for a while. It was warm in the kitchen and although neither of them said so, the other rooms downstairs felt too cavernous for them. The starchy food made them both feel a bit better, but they still felt bruised, fragile. When Stephen stood and stretched his arms and said he was going up to his room, Georgie padded after him.

‘Are you going to lie on the floor, like you did last night?’ he asked, smiling.

‘I thought I might get into bed with you actually,’ Georgie said.

‘Oh. Right.’

He took off his jeans, but kept his T-shirt and pants on. Georgie followed suit. Stephen got into bed first and Georgie slipped in beside him before turning on to her side, so that her back lay along his front.

‘I love spooning,’ she said. ‘Sometimes I go into Cass’s room and make her spoon me. When it’s cold.’

Stephen didn’t answer. He was too concerned that he might get a stiffie and was trying to think of other things, to stop that happening. He tried to picture the remains of the spaghetti in the pan downstairs, the chickens, the smell of plaster – or was it clay? – in Nick’s studio. But the memory of Georgie, naked on the riverbank in the dappled sunlight, kept inserting itself. And now here she was, in a bed with him, his bed. He felt a tell-tale warmth begin to gather around his groin.

‘Look, I’m not sure this is a very good idea,’ he said.

She wriggled herself around to face him.

‘Because of Helena?’

Stephen felt a flash of guilt. Helena hadn’t even entered his mind.

‘Well, no. More because … I don’t know. Just because.’

‘We don’t have to do anything. It’s just nice to have the company.’

‘Yeah, but …’ he trailed off, too embarrassed to explain himself.

‘We don’t have to do anything,’ she said again; but even as the words were coming out of her mouth she was pressing herself up against him, her face now so close to his that he could feel her breath enter his mouth.

Georgie clearly didn’t know about his feelings for Cass and maybe didn’t care about either of their feelings for Helena. That’s what he reasoned now. Otherwise she wouldn’t be doing what she was doing, unbuttoning her shirt and twining her legs around his. Maybe he could just go with the moment too, relax into this new and unexpected thing, not worry about the consequences. Maybe it would all be fine.

12.