I walked round to stand in front of Xiaoyu’s altar and pointed at the casket containing her ashes. ‘Huang Yiyi, please show a bit of respect for me, and don’t ever again mention love in front of my wife. You have no right to love me: I’m married!’

‘But Xiaoyu’s gone, and I’m sure … she’d understand.’

‘To you, maybe Xiaoyu is dead, but to me she’s going to live for ever. Go away, and in future show me a bit more respect.’

‘But you don’t respect me … Zaitian, hold me, I need you, I love you, please …’

I couldn’t stand it any more and shouted, ‘Stop that! I don’t love you and I never will! You have no right to love me, so will you please leave! Get out of here!’

She sat down on the sofa. ‘No.’

‘If you won’t leave then I’ll go!’ I started marching towards the door, and when I got there, I couldn’t stop myself from turning back to say, ‘Don’t you think you’re behaving really disgustingly? How can you say you love me?’

She looked at me, and then collapsed back against the sofa.

That evening Huang Yiyi sat in my room for over an hour, and then slowly and hesitantly she walked away. She didn’t look to left or right, but just walked straight ahead like a sleepwalker. Once I had seen her disappear into her own building, I went quietly home.

There was a note on the tea table, just a single line: ‘An Zaitian, I hate you!’

I quickly struck a match, and having turned my back to Xiaoyu’s altar, I burned the note.

The following morning I went to the canteen for breakfast, but though I waited a long time, I didn’t see Huang Yiyi. I started to get worried. I kept looking around in all directions, and just then Comrade Wang, the head of the training centre, came over to me and asked, ‘Hey, what was wrong with your new mathematician last night?’

I was surprised to suddenly be asked such a question by someone from the training centre, which stands a long way away from our cryptography division, so I replied somewhat coldly, ‘What do you mean?’

Wang said that the night before, just as he was on his way home from the guest house through the lashing rain at about two o’clock in the morning, he had seen Huang Yiyi wandering around looking like a lost soul, soaked to the skin, and she had refused to go home whatever he said.