‘We began to have sex on the sofa,’ he says, ‘and then she looked me in the eye and said, “I knew you still loved me,” and I thought, fuck, oh God, this is terrible. How do I convince her, after everything, this whole evening we’ve had and what we’re doing together now? And my idea then was to try to show her that I didn’t love her. To make her feel certain that I didn’t have any feelings for her, so that maybe she’d hate me for it, but at least she’d be free of this … terrible delusion. And I had her on the floor and I told her, No, I don’t love you. You’re cheaper than a whore. And she wouldn’t believe me! She thought it was a game. So I kept on. I felt I had to show her. I insulted her. I belittled her. And eventually I think she did believe me. But it was all happening so fast. I don’t know if she ever said Stop or anything like that. But at some point I know she pushed at me and called me some terrible name and I wouldn’t let her go because I needed her to know that her opinions didn’t matter to me. It was a kind of theatre. I couldn’t think of anything else.

‘And then afterwards she was crying and I desperately wanted to say, Look, I’m so sorry, I just needed you to understand that I don’t love you and telling you that I only liked you wasn’t working.’

Becky is rapt. An audience member in the theatre, a cinema, at home on the sofa. ‘It’s good you were upfront with her again. No room for ambiguity there.’

‘Well and then she asked me to call her a cab and I did that,’ he says. ‘We didn’t talk much while we waited for it to come.’

‘What more was there to say between the two of you?’

‘Exactly. But then she said she’d never forgive me for what I’d said and I said I didn’t expect her to. I put her in the taxi and I wished her well. And that was that. Well, then DB called me the next day and went off at me, saying Amber had called saying I’d assaulted her. And Antonia – well, you were there when she came to the office, weren’t you?’

‘Yes, that looked … it must have been awful.’

‘Amber had emailed her.’

‘Oh God.’