She flattened the pages and cleared her throat. ‘Her love ignited a fire inside me,’ she read. ‘I’d never beheld a countenance as bright as hers, and in that moment the Earth slipped away and my body took flight as her hungry fingers penetrated my sex.’

‘Whoa,’ I said. I looked at the cover again. ‘Is it lesbians?’

The woman smiled broadly. ‘Oh yes. It’s marvellous. He doesn’t usually write for lesbians, this chap. He does these awful romance novels for bored housewives about a haddock fisherman-turned doctor who fucks all his patients. But this series is his best by far. It’s Downton Abbey but with lesbians.’

‘Are you a lesbian?’

‘Yes, I suppose I am. Though I did love my husbands too.’

‘Husbands?’

‘Well, I loved four of them. One and three were shits. Five was a shit without me realising he was a shit. Two was a Nazi spy so he was a shit to everyone else. Four was gay himself. I think it’s called bisexual. That’s probably what I am.’

There was a red calla lily on the front of the book, looking unavoidably vaginal. ‘May I?’ She handed it to me and I thumbed through the dog-eared pages. ‘You’ve read this more than once, haven’t you?’

‘Of course. What else do I have? I’m too bloody arthritic for physical pleasure and I haven’t got the patience to keep learning the WiFi password.’

‘Big print,’ I said, gesturing to the pages.

‘I’m losing my sight,’ she murmured, closing her eyes towards the sun.

‘I’m not surprised.’

She grinned, wiggling her eyebrows. The grin was catching.

‘It’s more than that though,’ she said. ‘It’s full of that passion, the ardour one doesn’t experience often when one gets to a “certain age”. It captures that febrile intensity of reconciling with the yearnings of one’s body.’

‘Blimey.’

‘I had that once. For real.’ She picked up her drink and sipped half of it away. ‘It’s terrible in one way, once you’ve had it, because nothing ever matches up to it. The rest of the time you’re… treading water.’

‘Who with? Which husband was this?’

‘Oh God, no, not a husband. A waitress. On Capri. I met her on my second honeymoon.’

‘You had an affair with a waitress on your honeymoon?’

‘Yes.’ Her eyes twinkled. ‘And a rather torrid one at that. We were there for a month. My husband was working in Naples.’ She set down her glass and made a face. ‘Jordan’s a dear chap but he never puts enough rum in these.’

‘So tell me more about this waitress.’

‘Beatrice,’ she smiled, like she could still taste her. ‘Beatrice Genovesi. I knew it the moment our eyes met, she was it. You hear young people talking about “it” all the time – The One. Well, she was my One. And I was hers.’