He drew the quilt from the bed and wrapped it round me—which shifted the vibe from sexy boy slut to starving urchin rescued by kindly gentleman—before disappearing into the en suite. From within came the sound of Oliver’s shoes moving efficiently on tiles, along with the heavy gurgling of early-twentieth-century pipework. Eventually I drifted through, where I was largely unsurprised to discover that even the substandard rooms in Lettice Manor came equipped with the kind of bath that Roman senators would fuck their boyfriends in.

“Wow,” I said, peering through the steam at Oliver. “You must really love me.”

Oliver peered back, his normally austere hair gone curly in the heat. “Well, I do. But have I done something to make it particularly obvious?”

“Just that you’ve run this whole bath for me,” I told him, “and you haven’t once mentioned what a horrible waste of water it is.”

“Well… It is a horrible waste of water, but in the overall scheme of things I think you can permit yourself one bath. Besides”—he gave me a smile that said Mean Oliver hadn’t quite left the building—“I think you’re probably owed a few.”

“Are you saying I don’t wash?” I protested.

“I’m saying that between your unwillingness to do dishes and your occasional failure to be arsed with a shower, you’ve probably shrunk your water footprint enough to be indulgent just this once.”

I de-quilted and de-pantsed and descended down the marble steps into the steamy, bubbly, lightly scented water. “I wash. Both myself and dishes.” I paused. “Not simultaneously. Although, thinking about it, that would really cut my water footprint.”

“You’re right,” Oliver conceded. “I’ve maligned you unjustly. I suppose I’m still traumatised by that time you left a plate in the living room for a week.”

“So did you.”

“It was your plate.” He folded his arms. “And I was waiting to see if you’d notice.”

“It wasn’t a messy plate. It’d only had a sandwich on it.”

“Even so. Plates belong in the kitchen. In the cupboards. Not in the living room.”

I stretched out in the water, floating slightly—which frankly felt weird. Most baths I couldn’t even straighten my legs in. “Is this what being married to you is going to be like?”

“It’s what I’m like.” There was an unexpectedly defensive note in his voice. “So it may well be?”