‘Florence, I don’t believe a word that you have told me. Oh, some, certainly, of your love – of course I believe that – but the rest? No. I can’t believe all that stuff about “models”, as you call them. I knew James pretty well. Not closely, as you know, for we seldom saw each other, but I have known him since his birth – he was not the kind of man who could become “excited” by a few callow youths in the nude. I do not dispute that he painted a few pictures for some perverted American gentleman, but that would be for money, for no other reason – it was simply not in his character to be like that. Whatever had happened between you and himself, he would never in a million light years have become infatuated with a man or boy. Nothing could be further from possibility, whatever the circumstances.’

She stood looking down at me on my step, her eyes hard with anger, the grey iris in each beautiful eye hiding anxiety. When she spoke her voice was low. ‘Sex’, she said, ‘has an odour.’ She turned and crossed the terrace, entered the house.

I sat still for a moment, knowing, perfectly well, that she was still evading me, still dodging the true fact, embroidering the little clue which I had thrown her about the photographs of the wretched Daniel. I was equally certain that she was aware that I knew this, that she was frightened I’d pursue the conversation: things were to be left as they presently were as far as she was concerned. I would be told no more.

From the house I heard her calling me to come and help her with the shutters and in silence we closed the house, locked the door, and walked down the track to the car.

We drove back to the village in more or less polite, but extremely strained, silence, speaking only now and again about the beauty of the light, the traffic, and the fact that clouds were gathering above the cliffs. We avoided looking at each other.

We were both uneasy, uncomfortable. I because I felt certain that she had, somewhere along the line, started inventing things to deflect me from the truth, and she because, quite clearly, she knew that she had and that I was aware. The poor story of a possible change of sexual interest in James simply did not wash with me: for all his carelessness, his loucheness as a young man, for all his faults, and there were quite a number, that was not, and never could be, one of them. He would have been nauseated by such a thing. And even allowing for the fact that he was no longer a very young man, and could conceivably be going through some sort of traumatic experience with Florence, that is one direction which he would never have taken.