The weather, travel, even politics would have been preferable to love, but at least it was a change of topic. ‘Well, yes,’ she said carefully. ‘Love can save lives in the sense of dashing into a burning house and rescuing your children, or getting your mother to hospital when she has had a stroke.’

‘I mean the power of love, in that more numinous sense that you’re suggesting is the power of art.’

She shook her head. ‘No. Art speaks directly to you. Its effect is private. No one else need be involved.’ The words came slowly, she did not want to inflame either him or her. ‘When it comes to saving a life, art works in a very private way. But love always involves someone else. I would not like to think of my survival being hinged to another person.’

‘But falling in love —’

And all caution abruptly disappeared. ‘Love is too important simply to fall into it thoughtlessly or unwittingly. Love deserves your fullest attention, your clearest consciousness. Love demands a deliberate course of action.’ She paused. ‘I would not fall in love with anyone.’

He was thinking she used English better than he did, better than most native speakers. He was also thinking how instinctively he disagreed with her — and how she’d hate the idea of anything happening ‘instinctively’.

Not long afterwards, she rose to leave. He said he’d walk her home; she said she would prefer to go alone.

‘Do you forgive me?’ he said at the door. And before she could answer, he added, ‘Are we all right?’

She nodded, leaned towards him and kissed him briefly on the lips. ‘It was only an argument, Andryusha. Of course we are all right.’

He did not believe her.

He’d been such a fool; even as her friend, she surely must be having second thoughts. And what she said about love, it was meant personally, a clear statement she would never fall in love with him. As for the kiss, that was a kindness, a gesture of pity; so too the intimate Andryusha. He wished he could erase the evening, he wished he lived on a lighthouse far from human company, he wished he were not himself.

His mind raged as he washed the dishes and tidied up, it raged as he took the rubbish out to the bin, it raged as he went up to the roof and smoked in the darkness, it raged when he returned inside. He paced the studio, up to one end and back to the other, up to the end and back again; he gathered some scattered tesserae, added them to his oddments tray, loitered at his workbench, rearranged the containers, straightened his tools, lined up everything with geometric precision, transferred a stack of small picture boards to a shelf.