‘You haven’t quite regained your composure, have you my sweet? Wrap it.’

‘Sorry?’

‘The squab, wrap the lettuce around it.’

He obeyed.

‘Did I say one of mine or just a motion picture?’

‘You said… I’m not sure.’

He said in deference; still crawling out of the hole.

‘I thought you did?’

He doubted now.

‘That’s what has stayed in my mind at any rate.’

‘My, I must have had a weak and trusting moment both at the same time. Not much chance of that. At least let’s get on a clearer footing as to what it is you want, and in a way who the fuck you are, other than that you are in my house, eating, and you have to be nearly fifty years younger than me. It is a little disconcerting, also because sex is not something I go in for.’

A strange expression, go in for, he thought, as if it was a sport that you had to choose at school. He saw sex as just something that you wanted or didn’t and had never considered it to be an add-on option. An option to take up or not.

‘How old are you anyway?’

‘Thirty, nearly thirty-one.’

‘Oh, that makes a big difference.’

A rare moment of sarcasm.

‘The ribs are delicious.’

Relieved that he had something that consumed him fully, hands, mouth, and napkin. The works. Fully occupied and he didn’t feel the embarrassment of having to make conversation.

‘Married, are you?’

She asked dispassionately.

Now forking a small amount of the squab onto the lettuce and wrapping it into a roll, the plum sauce having lined the lettuce. So that’s how it’s done; he felt a moment of stupidity, but small by comparison to how stupid he had felt for most of the evening.

‘Yes, but separated, the child turned out not to be mine. Not that it affects my love for him. He’s called Jacob, he’s two, nearly three really.’

Why is everything a ‘nearly’ thought Ever.

‘Well it’s not the love, just the sense of connection I suppose, well, incorrectly perhaps, really, the sense of ownership, and I know, before you correct me, you don’t own your kids.’

‘I wouldn’t know.’

She interrupted.

‘I don’t have any. And your father, what about him?’

‘The person I have loved more than anything in the world.’

He could see the invitation to carry on in her look.

‘I watched him destroy himself slowly over a period of years. His creativity was, I suppose, his life, the thing that motored him, and it just left him. Disappointment and pain, well an agony, just took him.’

The invitation remained.

‘It happened after this man bought all his work and then did nothing with them, you know, the paintings. He just warehoused them, waiting to see if he ever broke. You know, became something.’

‘I know.’