Early that evening, it seems a good idea to go to the pub. After starting my second glass of wine, it seems a good idea to phone George. Twenty minutes after the phone call, a pack of salt and vinegar crisps appears on the table in front of me, along with a pint and a third glass of red wine, so it seems a good idea to look up and see who the bearer of these wonderful things is. George is standing there, smiling and hooking out the chair beside me. Our knees almost touch, because the pub is crowded. And because it is too noisy in the pub to talk, and that third glass of wine is too much for me, and George only just saves it from spilling when I knock it over but he catches it and a little sloshes onto his hand, it seems a good idea to leave, and take a walk by the river.

The clouds are giant sculptured angels, white and floating, processing slowly over the weir, and there is a slivered crescent of moon in the night sky. The clouds are calm, but the weir is angry, hissing like a blow torch, the water thundering down the sides to the boiling centre. The weir is hungry like the sea.

When I first moved to Bath, I was so close to letting myself fall in. I thought all the time of feeding myself to the weir, letting it grab me and suck me under and tumble me round and round as if I were trapped in a washing machine’s drum.

‘It soothes me.’ I begin to sway forwards, towards the water, rising on my toes. George reaches out, as if to make sure I don’t step off.

He laughs. ‘Well that’s scary. I think it’s time to get you away from here.’ His fingers close around mine. It is the first time he has touched me in a way that couldn’t possibly be construed as accidental, the first time any man other than a doctor has done this since Zac, and I stiffen.

‘Sorry.’ He releases my hand.

I shake my head. ‘It’s okay. I just wasn’t expecting . . .’ I take his hand, feel how warm his fingers are, loose in mine. I curl my own around his.

Gently, he curls back. ‘Okay?’

‘Yes.’

We are still for a minute. ‘Nice?’ He leans sideways, drawing closer, but not touching.

‘More than nice.’ I squeeze his hand.

‘Shall we find somewhere quieter?’

I am not going to let what happened freeze me forever. In the throes of my tipsiness, my appreciation of the difference between George and Zac makes me turn to George and look up at his face.