After they had eaten, she lit candles and persuaded him to go to bed with her. “I’m really tired,” she said. “Really exhausted.” She sighed and clung to him. Her skin was still damp and flushed from the bath. Kearney ran his fingers down between her buttocks. She breathed in sharply, then rolled away onto her stomach and half-knelt, raising herself so that he could reach her better. Her sex felt like very soft suede. He rubbed it until her entire body went rigid and she came, gasping, making a kind of tiny coughing groan. To his surprise this gave him an erection. He waited for it to subside, which took a few minutes, then said:

“I probably have to go away.”

She stared at him. “But what about me?”

“Anna, I left you long ago,” he reminded her.

“But you’re still here. You’re happy to come and fuck me; you come for this.”

“It’s you who wants this.”

She clutched his hand. “But I see that thing,” she said. “I see it every day now.”

“When do you see it? It doesn’t want you anyway. It never did.”

“I’m so exhausted today. I really don’t know what’s the matter with me.”

“If you ate more—”

She turned her back on him abruptly.

“I don’t know why you come here,” she whispered. Then, vehemently: “I have seen it. I’ve seen it in that room. It stands in there, staring out of the window.”

“Christ,” he said. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“Why should I tell you anything?”

She fell asleep soon after that. Kearney moved away from her and lay staring at the ceiling, listening to the traffic cross Chiswick Bridge. It was a long time before he could sleep. When he did, he experienced, in the form of a dream, a memory of his childhood.