‘The first week you’re back,’ Nigel had told him, ‘get yourself to a massage parlour. Or call up one of those escort services. Get yourself laid. Not because you think you deserve it, or because you’ve been thinking of little else for the past two decades. Sex is like everything else that’s on the outside – another bloody link in the chain that shackles you. Do it so that you can rid yourself of it. So that you don’t have to think about it any more. Trust me,’ and Nigel had given him a long, exacting look, ‘you don’t want to have that hanging around your neck.’

Advice that was well meant, but for once Nigel had missed the mark. That is not how Anton is made, not how he functions. The thought of approaching a prostitute fills him with a rank fear that he can almost taste. And he suspects that, rather than providing comfort, it would only deepen his loneliness.

But being here in the semi-darkness with Leah fills a void in him, slakes his thirst for companionship.

‘There is something about you,’ he says, ‘that feels so familiar to me.’ And then he reaches tentatively for her hand, rests his ever so lightly on hers. ‘Like we knew each other in a past life.’

She is visibly embarrassed by this strange display, and quickly he withdraws his hand.

‘Goodnight, Leah. Thank you for the wine. And the company.’

She gives him one of her distracted little half-smiles and stands there watching him climb the steps up to the back door that leads into his kitchen. As he reaches for the handle, he casts one last look down at her.

‘Happy birthday, Anton,’ she calls up softly, and that one salutation – that solitary voice on the warm air – causes something inside him to flutter and hum. A whirring vibration about his heart.

For hours afterwards, he sits at his kitchen table, smoking one cigarette after another, his mind racing.

She will be in bed by now, he thinks, the boyfriend turning over, his arm finding her in the darkness.

Anton pours himself a whisky, hoping it will settle his mind. For years his conversations have been confined to male circles. He feels weirdly agitated after tonight, as if some part of him has been altered. Subtly changed.

He looks at the kitchen window, sees the darkness pressing up against the panes, knows that soon the dawn will seep through the dark – it is never really dark anyway, not at this time of the year.

And now, as the ash smoulders and falls, and he stubs out the cigarette on the saucer in front of him, he sees the shake in his hand, feels it.