Chris and Leah watched in companionable silence, both deriving from the movie’s familiar trajectory that sense of achievement peculiar to well-loved books and films, which oblige us by meeting our expectations at every turn. Chris’s mind was half on Leah’s quiet presence beside him, the way her body tensed and relaxed as each scene built to its melodramatic climax. He realised that he was enjoying her company. There was something calming about her, which, after the messy debauchery of the night before, he was well-placed to appreciate. Certainly she was no longer standoffish, as she had seemed in the pub last weekend. And he was touched by her revelation about the eczema, which he read – correctly – as an uncharacteristic lowering of her guard.

Leah sat right forward in her seat for the closing sequence; then, when the credits rolled up, she sat back again, her shoulder brushing against Chris’s as she did so. Chris half-shuddered, half-thrilled at this contact. He was in that strange, shivery phase of his hangover, when the skin’s sensory abilities seem unnaturally heightened – not quite arousal, but something very similar. He turned to look properly at Leah. Her hair was almost dry now. The mole on her right cheek was flat and pale with ragged edges, a bit like a melted smudge of milk chocolate. Chris resisted an impulse to reach up and thumb it away.

‘Good stuff, eh?’ he said, inclining his head towards the television.

‘Mmmm,’ Leah agreed.

It happened almost by accident: their eyes met, casually, insignificantly. Chris looked away, then glanced back – to find that Leah was still looking at him. In fact, she too had looked away then looked back, and, meeting Chris’s gaze for a second time, assumed that he had never taken his eyes off her.

Now it seemed to each of them as if the other were very deliberately maintaining this contact. The look lengthened, accrued meaning. So Chris wanted to kiss her, Leah thought; well, she had no particular objection to that. Chris was remembering, dimly, something Tamsin had said to him at the tube station the other night: You go and have fun with Leah. Had Tamsin known that Leah liked him?

With the first contact – soft and light on her upper lip, Chris’s tongue felt faintly, as warmth rather than wetness – came a flicker of excitement in Leah’s belly, and then another, deeper stirring lower down. Leah closed her eyes and willed her mind into these sensations, trying to keep them alight. It was a bit like being in bed when it was very cold, with one false move enough to destroy the thin aura of heat around your body. Chris increased the pressure of his lips and tongue; he had his hands in her hair, and she could hear, from his breathing, that he was becoming aroused. With effort, Leah kept contact with the feeling inside her.