So this was the lie he would be telling for the rest of time, he thought miserably: that he had grown disillusioned with the thing he loved most in the world, that he had all but voluntarily chosen to leave the place he was happiest. The question he’d been trying not to ask himself since 2 p.m. yesterday pushed its way to the front of his mind: was he, as the school had clearly decided, unfit to teach? At one end, there was harmless casual fantasy, a vague predilection. And then at the other there were things that were unequivocally bad, like child pornography or actually doing something that caused distress, or pain. He was certain he would never be guilty of that. But there were infinite gradations between those two poles: terra non-firma that he wanted, and didn’t want, to explore.

‘And to make it all worse,’ he said, talking quickly and loudly to obscure this murky line of thought, ‘I can’t get hold of Tamsin. I don’t know where she’s got to, her mother doesn’t know either.’

‘Oh, I’m sure she’s fine,’ Will said uneasily. ‘Another one of those?’

* * *

Callum heard from Tamsin the next day. It was an email – brief and trite, full of break-up boilerplate. She thanked him for their wonderful years together and informed him that she needed to be alone right now. No doubt this wouldn’t come as a surprise to him; it had been ending for a while. She was sorry to be melodramatic but she felt it would be too painful for them to see each other again. He could keep anything of hers that he found in the flat.

Callum wanted to write and ask her why, but – he thought – he already knew. It was his sexual shortcomings that had driven her away, like all the girls before her. That, and the ridiculous blunder he had made when he let on he’d confided in Leah about his problem.

In the end, he sent her a single-line response: ‘Is there anything I can do to change your mind? If not, no need to reply.’

She didn’t reply.

Eleven

Callum was surprised to find himself unbroken. Angry, yes; ashamed, yes; but not broken. He got a temporary job working on a building site off the Tottenham Court Road and found he could get by, for the time being at least, on hard physical labour and the exhaustion it brought at the end of each day.