We looked round a gallery, had lunch. I was scornful about the artworks and made him laugh, and we shared a bottle of wine. All the social muscles I’d always resisted using sprang into action and started working overtime. I was off: I was doing everything I could to hold his interest, to make him want me.

He told me I was a philistine. I said, ‘You’ll have to educate me, then,’ and he looked at me thoughtfully and said, ‘Well, I might.’

I asked him if he’d fallen in love with me. I meant it as a joke, but actually, I was wondering if he might, or if I would fall in love with him.

He said, ‘I think I have. You’re charming and funny and bright and beautiful. Why wouldn’t I fall for you?’

A lie can sound just like the truth, especially if it is what you want to hear, and the biggest and most dangerous lies of all can be the ones you most want to believe. And so I accepted this compliment unquestioningly, as if it was a gift too good to say no to. And then I let him take me upstairs to his small, bare, plainly furnished apartment, and to his bed.

We spent an hour together before I needed to go and catch my train. And he did educate me, just as he had promised.

He showed me that you can take something precious from someone without them realising it’s gone, and that the easiest way to do this is to persuade them to give it to you.

And he introduced me to the comfort of being close to someone, as close as it’s possible to be. But as I found out on the train afterwards, however much you try to make the moment last, and however much you give up for it, sooner or later you’ll find yourself travelling home alone.

Fifteen

Jenny

On the flight back from France I sat next to Mark with the girls behind us, as we’d done on the way out. Ellie and Ava were both quiet, and Ava looked tired. She let Ellie have the windowseat – uncharacteristically generous – and got out one of the textbooks she’d insisted on bringing so she could revise from it, but hadn’t touched all holiday. They both spent the journey with their noses in their books, apparently oblivious to the clouds floating past the plane window and everything else.

Well, Ellie had always been capable of losing herself in whatever she was reading, and Ava was bound to be preoccupied. Her time out was over, and it was back to the reality of exams.

It was always a mistake, with girls that age – of any age – to jump to conclusions about what was bothering them.

If she seemed all right, it was probably as much of a sign as we could hope for that she was. She needed time and space to get used to Mark, and we had to respect that.