But I did.

Relations?

After breakfast?

Yesterday?

With Mr Franklin D. Huff?

Just before he …? With … with me …? In the sauna?

Was the man some kind of … of beast?!

‘And then he rushed off,’ she continued, oblivious. ‘And I just thought … Oh, maybe that was a mistake, Sage. Maybe I’ve … I don’t know …’

‘Been cruelly manipulated by Mr Huff?’ I suggested, huskily.

‘No. No. Quite the opposite,’ Mrs Meadows insisted.

‘Ah.’ I nodded, unconvinced.

‘I mean it can’t be any coincidence that I keep on trying to establish relationships with the kind of men who all just seem to want to … who all just seem to want to up and to … to leave …’

Silence.

‘Well Mr Meadows didn’t actually want to leave,’ I corrected her.

‘No. I simply thought because he was older, more stable, had a reliable profession, that he might actually manage to stick around for a while.’ Mrs Meadows smiled, wryly.

‘He was very dashing,’ I said (even though he wasn’t, particularly).

‘And I suppose it’s because I’m always expecting the men I’m attracted to to suddenly charge off,’ she idly extemporized, ‘that I kind of … I tend to cram everything in as quickly as I possibly can. Just in case they … you know. Especially if I find them attractive. Like Mr Huff. Who’s so charming. So clever. So … so exciting and exotic. I can sometimes tend to be a little bit … forward. And perhaps this leads them into thinking that I’m pushy or … or …’

‘Easy,’ I filled in, without thinking.

She shot me an accusing look.

‘Sorry,’ I mumbled, ‘I was simply …’

‘But it’s only because of this nagging doubt, this fear that they’ll run off and abandon me before I’ve even had a chance to …’

Mrs Meadows is crying!

Oh no! Mrs Meadows is crying over Mr Huff! Or if not over Mr Huff himself exactly, then over all the other men in her life who have used and then abandoned her. Like Mr Huff! Although Mr Huff hasn’t formally abandoned her. Not as yet.

She started feeling around in her shoulder bag for a tissue.

I reached into my pocket, removed a large, cotton handkerchief and carried it over to her.

She took it, gratefully, and blew her nose on it, noisily. In truth, the most I had expected (in terms of wear) was for her to quickly dab away at her tears with it.

‘For the record, I don’t find Mr Huff remotely exotic,’ I said, hoping to bolster her with a small serving of the plain old truth. ‘It’s like the life he’s lived hasn’t left a single interesting mark on him. He’s so stiff and so uptight and … and so polished, so finished. The very idea of him in Montserrat—’

‘Monterrey,’ she interrupted.

‘Yes, Monterrey. It just seems extraordinary to me.’

Mrs Meadows blew her nose, explosively, for a second time.

‘And I can’t honestly fathom why you’d want to lie about a Pure Maths and Engineering degree, either,’ I continued.