They fall silent, and the silence is painful and inert. She wants to fill it, with desire, with violence. She crosses towards him and takes his hand in hers. He looks down at her hand, then back up at her face. “I’m sorry,” he says.

“What for?” She puts her hand over his eyes, tenderly, as though shielding them from the sun. She feels him close them—the eyelids flickering beneath her palm. She reaches behind her and turns off the light again. She moves her hand away gently, running her fingertips down his cheek, his neck. His eyes remain closed as she gets to her knees before him and begins to unbuckle his belt.

“What are you doing?” he says.

He is hard already when she takes him into her mouth, and she holds him there for a moment. She moves her mouth against him and he pulls her up to standing, then he turns her around, pulls down her knickers, and pushes himself into her, roughly, and she gasps in pain. He pulls out of her. He cups himself, pulls up his jeans, turns away from her. “Sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

She turns around to him. He is still wearing his coat. It is a strange sight, him in his coat, cupping himself like that—she could almost laugh.

“It’s OK,” she says, pulling her knickers back up. But it is not OK. Not really. Not at all. “It’s OK,” she says again.

He buckles his belt. “I’m going away,” he says. “I’m going to go away for a couple of weeks. I need some space.”

“You need some space,” she repeats. Her voice sounds strange. She wants to cry, but she knows she has no right. She can feel it coming towards her, like a wave, a wave that will flatten her. And how afterwards there will be nothing left, nothing left to say what this was, how this felt. How no one will be interested in her version of events.

“I won’t contact you,” she says.

He nods. “I think it would be best.” He reaches out and his hand lands briefly, gently, on her bracelet. He touches her as he might a child.

And she is furious now. And she sees that he wants it to be easy. He wants the water to cover this over, for the bubbles to rise to the surface and disappear, for the smooth surface to give no sign of what was underneath. “It wasn’t worth it,” she says.

“What?”

“The sex.”

She sees the shock on his face. He steps back into the room. And his expression has changed. It is needy now. Now she has hurt his ego. He wants something from her—she sees that, despite it all, he wants her to tell him it was good. That he was good. How pathetic, his need. How desperate the pair of them is.