It’s Gabriel, Flo. Angels are men.

Don’t be silly, Daddy. She giggles, jiggling her knees with excitement. Men aren’t angels. Black patent leather party shoes, sensible white ankle socks.

No, but angels are men. He has to explain reality, even when neither of them is attached to it.

You mean Bible angels.

Yes.

Gabrielle’s not a man.

No.

Flora squints at him.

You like her a lot, Daddy. Is she married? Mummy says you only like ladies who are married.

All his women were stolen.

Flora’s mother, Rachel, he had stolen from a sappy Rogerian therapist called Larch. He and Larch met on a training course; Larch made the mistake of inviting him to dinner, along with another couple, and a lone woman called Sally with whom they were clearly hoping to pair him off. Sally was a friend from Rachel’s yoga class. Like Rachel, she seemed able to tolerate the bitterness of bean sprouts and healthy teas, but unlike Rachel, she gave off no discernible pheromones, having so thoroughly cleansed her system through the regular use of crystals and Chinese herbs that she emanated only a sense of self-righteous balance and clarity. Rachel, however, was so deliciously unbalanced that three glasses of Pinot Grigio and a joke about baby seals as he helped her clear the mains was enough to allow him to brush his fingertips against her breasts in the kitchen, on the lame excuse of retrieving an invisible grain of wild rice.

He understood the subtle needs of women: to have desire sparked through gentle accident, intrigued through flirtation and stimulated through respectful withdrawal. When your hostess has followed you into an unlit cloakroom to help you find your jacket, perhaps half expecting you to attempt a drunken snog that she can rebuff, you place on her cheek a tender and open-lipped kiss that electrifies with its frisson; stands her hairs to attention. But no more. Your soft-clasped thank you cradles her hand for two seconds longer than the delicious pavlova deserved. But you leave.

Later, alone in the physical crescendo conducted by your imagination, your wet hands are her willing mouth. In a week or so, knowing her workplace and fathoming her hours, you manufacture a spontaneous meeting and declare it the work of Fate. Over a coffee she needs like heroin you allow her to unfurl her day, spreading it over your longing like a patchwork quilt over a stain, as you meet her eyes and repeat in your head, You are beautiful. Your eyes shine with the words, and on some level she hears them. A practical excuse you have both engineered allows her to take your number. She will call you for support when her current man fails to respond to her subtleties. And soon, soon, she will arrive at the door of your apartment in white knee-high boots and a dress fashioned for a Greek goddess, demanding you melt her with your tongue.