‘That’s good of you,’ I said, then, with a sense of exposing something important about myself, ‘My dad isn’t around any more, either. He died of a heart attack when I was little.’

‘Mine crashed his car into a tree. There were questions asked about it, but in the end the verdict at the inquest was accidental death,’ Mark said.

‘I’m so sorry.’

He was looking at me in that special, serious way again. Under the table, his legs pressed against mine on either side and squeezed them together. As if what he wanted wasn’t sex, but someone to embrace, to hold on to.

‘I’m sorry about your dad, too,’ he said.

Then he asked for the bill and insisted on paying, and we went out onto the street and found that it was pouring with rain.

We joked about it ruining his haircut and he suggested taking shelter at the nearest possible place and I asked where that was and he said just round the corner… his flat, and would I like yet another coffee? Or maybe something stronger?

I said, ‘What about tomorrow?’

‘Oh, don’t worry about that.’

He pulled me in towards him and kissed me, and then I really was completely lost.

Later on, when we were in each other’s arms on his sofa with the lights down low and the album of the moment playing in the background, he said he had something to tell me.

‘I’m married. But we’re separated.’

‘Did she have an affair?’

His face twisted up as if he’d just been physically hurt. Then he composed himself. ‘She fell in love with someone else. A colleague.’

‘Oh.’

I could have said thank you and goodbye, got up, straightened my clothing and gone home. But I didn’t. I carried on lying there.

‘So technically this is cheating,’ I said.

‘You could see it that way, I suppose.’

‘Nobody could ever cheat on anybody unless someone helped them do it. I’m not really that kind of person.’

‘I know you’re not,’ he said. ‘I could tell that about you straight away. You’re kind, and decent and honest, Jenny. And those are rare qualities, believe me.’

‘If I was all the things you’ve just said, I’d go.’

‘Don’t go.’ He pulled me towards him and held me tight. ‘Don’t leave me, Jenny.’

And I didn’t, and by and by I let him lead me to the bedroom.

He had told me that the flat belonged to a friend who was away and had let him stay, that he had never been there with his wife. Paula. He said her name with a peculiar mix of softness and bitterness and protectiveness, as if he was letting me into something intimate, something he wouldn’t normally have wanted people to see. Something he was ashamed of.

I’d heard that tone of voice, that mix of hatred and nostalgia, plenty of times when people talked about their exes. It was the sound of love gone wrong. It was that, more than anything, that convinced me it was over between them, and allowed me to put the thought of her out of my mind.