Her hair has fallen forward, a flap of it partially covering one eye, but the other is on him, filling with tears. He sees her chin tremble, but it doesn’t arouse any compassion within him. And when she tells him now that she loves him, that she’s never loved anyone else, he turns away from her, and moves to the armchair by the fireplace, sinks into it, exhausted.

‘You’ve got the wrong end of the stick,’ he says, leaning forward so that his elbows rest on his knees, his face dropping into his cupped hands. It seems amazing to him that hardly more than an hour ago he was sitting in the park amid the busy Sunday-market commerce, eating olives, full of hope. All that energy and enthusiasm has drained away. His son has marched off in despair, and Leah has retreated from him, like a nervous rabbit. He is left alone with this woman and her unfathomable hopes, her reckless fantasies.

She comes to him now and, to his horror, she kneels in front of him, placing her hands on his knees. Her face is watery, her certainty having wavered under the blow of his rejection, but there is still a stubborn persistence: he sees it in her flushed cheeks, her dilated pupils.

‘I know the sacrifice you made,’ she tells him, her voice shaky and barely controlled. ‘And I have kept faith with it all these years. I never breathed a word. I have kept your secret, my darling, and I have waited.’ Her face breaks into a wavering smile. She appears unhinged, and then she adds with a hopeful raise of her eyebrows: ‘Haven’t I proven beyond all doubt that I am your Penelope?’

Her hands are still on his knees, and he grabs hold of them now.

‘I don’t know what it is you thought would happen between us,’ he tells her, forcefully, ‘but this love affair you’ve conjured up is just a fantasy.’

She twitches her head, still wearing her hopeful smile that seems maddeningly complacent to him and makes him tighten his grip on her hands, shaking them.

‘I never asked you to wait for me, or – or lie for me or keep secrets! I don’t love you – I never did! It was just supposed to be a bit of fun, that’s all. The odd shag here and there. It was nineteen years ago, for Christ’s sake! You’re the one who constructed this ridiculous notion of romance around it.’

Her smile falters, the gleam in her eye dims. When she speaks, her voice has weakened with doubt. ‘My letters. All those years I wrote to you. You knew what I –’

‘Dear God, Hilary! I told you to stop sending them! In the same way I wouldn’t have you visit me. Those letters were nonsense, like some lovesick teenager’s!’