As the evening wore on, their mood had got more and more mellow, thanks partly to liberal quantities of Chianti. When she had gone outside into the backyard with Banks, who wanted a cigarette, and when he had put his arm around her, she had felt herself tremble like a teenager as she had blurted out all the reasons about why they shouldn’t do what they were about to do.

Well, they had done it. And now she had ended the affair. Sometimes she regretted that and wondered why she had done it. Partly it was because of her career, of course. Working in the same station as the DCI you’re screwing was bad policy. But maybe that was just an excuse. Besides, it didn’t have to be that way. She could have worked in another station, somewhere where the opportunities were just as good, if not better than at Western Area Headquarters.

It was true that Banks still seemed tied to his past, to his marriage, but she could have handled that. It was also something that would have waned in time. Everyone had emotional baggage, including Annie herself. No, she thought, the reasons for what she did were within herself, not the job, not Banks’s past. Intimacy had felt like a threat to her, and the closer she had got to Banks, the more she had felt suffocated and tried to pull away.

Would it be like that with every man she met? Was it to do with the rape? Possibly, she thought. Or at least partly. She wasn’t sure she would ever completely get over that. What happened that night had certainly damaged her deeply. She didn’t think she was beyond repair, just that she had a long way to go. She still had occasional nightmares, and though she had never told Banks this, sex had sometimes been an effort for her, had even hurt at times. Sometimes the simple act of penetration, however consensual and gentle, had brought back the surge of panic and the feeling of sheer powerlessness she had first experienced that night. Sex certainly had its dark side, Annie knew. It could be demonic, close to violence, pushing you into dangerous and vaguely imagined desires and dark areas, beyond taboo. It was no wonder, then, she thought, that the idea of sex was so often mentioned in the same breath as violence. Or that sex and death were so intimately linked in the words and works of so many writers and artists.

Annie finished her milk and tried to laugh off her morbid thoughts. Still, they seemed to be the only kind she had at night, alone and unable to sleep. She put the kettle on for tea and went into the living room to browse through her small video collection. In the end, she settled on Doctor Zhivago, which had always been one of her favorite films, and when the tea was ready, she lounged on the sofa in the dark with her steaming mug, legs tucked under her, and gave herself up to the haunting theme music and the epic story of love in a time of revolution.