It dawned on her, more emphatically than ever before, how very brief is the human span of years. The endless days of youth, the early years of a marriage stretching to a far distant ‘till death do us part’, the pledging of lifelong friendships, new interests popping up, and countless possibilities beckoning along an endless road to the future: time, like air, is in such lavish supply when you’re young. With each passing year you add to the pile of things you want to do. Then suddenly comes the day when the pile of things you want to do has turned into the things you will never do, and ‘endless’ and ‘forever’ have been erased from the picture.

In the week between her chance meeting with Mark at the café and their first date at University House, it occurred to Sylvie, as it never had before, that she had no time to waste. She stood at the edge of the precipice, and, with her eyes wide open, she leapt.

At last she understood why people made such a fuss about sex. It was fun, it was engrossing, it was sexy. The touch, the smells, the fluids, she loved him all over her, his mouth, his tongue, his hands. She loved what he could do with his body, she loved what he could do with hers. From the beginning, she’d observed a certain modesty with Leonard, through ignorance more than anything else, and when Leonard had not challenged it, she’d accepted it as the norm. Now she discarded all modesty. She would stand naked in front of Mark, she who had never before stood completely naked in front of anyone, and he would watch and appreciate. And when he’d feasted enough (that was his word, ‘feasted’), he would step towards her and wrap his body around hers, and she would feel him all over her as they touched and touched and touched. Nothing was out of bounds. ‘Let yourself go,’ he said. And she did, as if she would never have to account for herself, as if there never would be a day of reckoning.

He was her walk on the wild side. He was her wild side. And yes, they made love to Lou Reed. That sexy tease of so many of his songs — she couldn’t believe she had missed it before.

Everything she did with Mark was new, and everything was a live wire. He took her to a café located in a narrow lane at the top end of the city. They entered via an unmarked door, up a wooden staircase into an ordinary room, with ordinary tables and chairs, where wine, white or red, was served in tumblers and there was no menu. And throughout the meal he touched her, his hand on her hand, his foot nudging her foot, his knees pressed against hers. They went to a pub where union deals accompanied the downing of beers; with the tip of his forefinger, he removed the froth from her upper lip, and, not even realising what she was doing, she raised her head just the slightest, and sucked his finger into her mouth. They saw a play performed in a building that looked as if it ought to be condemned; locked in the darkness with him, she might well have been naked.