Mrs Meadows was beaming.

‘And a love of nature,’ I added, just for good measure.

She was utterly delighted.

‘And of words,’ I finished off, ‘a love of words.’

Had I gone too far? A love of words? Had Mr Huff given any evidence during our short acquaintance of a ‘love of words’?

‘Is there something the matter with your lip?’ Mrs Meadows enquired, concerned.

‘Sorry?’

‘You keep touching … putting your hand up to your lip, patting away at it, as you speak.’

‘Do I?’

I removed my hand from my lip and used it, instead, to tuck my hair behind my ear.

Why was I touching my …?

Guilt, perhaps?

But was it really a kiss, though? In the sauna? An actual kiss? Wasn’t it more of a …? Something more in the emotional realm of a cough or … or a sneeze? A joke, but without the funny bit? Without the punch-line? Like the … like the scaffolding, but without the actual building inside?

I gazed, in silence, at Sage Meadows as she painstakingly removed a stray red hair which had become tangled around the tiny pearl button on the cuff of her shirt sleeve. Oh how could any sensible woman with her wits about her be in love with a bounder like Mr Huff? I wondered. Least of all such a fine example of the sex as she? Such a thoroughly finished and polished female? With her hair and her heels and her lipstick and her utterly impractical dry-clean-only suede skirt? (And please let’s not forget her Pure Maths and Engineering degree!)

‘I have a terrible weakness,’ Mrs Meadows confided (Why does she feel the need to confide? And in me of all people?), ‘for men who aren’t likely to want to hang around for any extended period.’ She pulled out a chair from the table and sat down on it (it creaked, alarmingly). ‘My first college boyfriend signed up for two years with VSO straight after graduating and then promptly fell in love with a beautiful Sudanese woman who was spearheading a campaign in North Africa against involuntary female genital mutilation.’

I winced.

‘My next worked on the oil rigs. Then there was Mr Meadows’ – she sighed – ‘who died. Then a long-haul air pilot. Then a foreign correspondent for the BBC who was posted to Hong Kong …’

‘You weren’t tempted to go with him?’ I enquired.

‘I was. But he didn’t ask.’

‘Oh.’

I tucked my hair behind my ears.

‘What kind of men do you have a weakness for?’ Mrs Meadows wondered, in all good faith (and there we have it! The worst part of exchanging confidences – the exchanging of confidences!).

‘I’m not sure that I have a weakness for any particular kind of man,’ I say.

‘Well how would you go about describing your current partner?’ she persisted.

‘Uh …’ I frowned, uneasily. ‘I suppose I must quite like tall men,’ I ‘shared’, ‘because my last serious partner,’ (Clifford Bickerton, circa 1972) ‘was very … very tall.’