She loved the little colored bowls trundling around the conveyer belt and was soon piling empty ones up by her plate like so many mounds of skulls. She was actually quite a dainty eater, but steady and determined. I picked at a bowl of spicy salmon rice. My stomach still wasn’t really settled, but it was a pleasure to watch the obvious delight she got from each dish. Fortunately the YO! Sushi closed before she exceeded my credit card limit and we tumbled out of the Brunswick Centre and walked back along Bernard Street toward Russell Square tube station. It had rained while we were in the cinema and the streets were slick and fresh. Simone stopped walking and dragged my head down so she could kiss me. She tasted of soy sauce.

“I don’t want to go home,” she said.

“How about my place,” I said.

“Your place?”

“Sort of,” I said.

The coach house is not the perfect crash pad but I certainly didn’t want Simone meeting Molly when she was in one of her moods. Simone blew right past my two grand worth of consumer electronics and went straight to the studio under the skylight.

“Who’s this?” she asked. She’d found the portrait of Molly reclining nude while eating cherries.

“Somebody who used to work here years ago,” I said.

She gave me a sly look. “Turn around,” she said. “And close your eyes.”

I did as I was told. Behind me I heard the stealthy rustle of clothes, a suppressed curse followed by a zip unfastening, the thump of her boots hitting the floor, the whisper of silk as it slipped over her skin. There was a long pause and then I heard the creak of antique furniture as she made herself comfortable.

She made me wait a little bit longer.

“You can turn around now,” she said.

She was reclining, nude and beautiful, on the chaise longue. She didn’t have a bowl of cherries so she’d let her fingers drift down to twist in the brown curls of her hair. She was so delicious I didn’t know where to start.

Then I saw it, a blotch like a port-wine birthmark in the corner of her mouth. I thought it was a smear of something she’d been eating but then it ripped while I was staring at it. With a hideous crunch her jaw splintered as a crude triangle of skin peeled back from her face. I saw muscle, tendon, and bone stretch and pop, and her jaw hung slack like that of a cut puppet.

“What’s wrong?” asked Simone.

Nothing. Her face was back as it had been, wide, beautiful, the arc of her smile fading as I staggered backward.

“Peter?”