She is waiting at the gym in Kensington for a South African called Morné. He was until recently a professional rugby player with Saracens, but a serious skull fracture means that he is now a personal trainer, at least until he passes his coaching exams. She is in love with his body, although his mind is a mystery. It may be a mystery in the sense that there are depths she hasn’t yet plumbed, but she is not sure. He has theories, about motivation and the techniques required to succeed in life, involving focus, but she doesn’t understand them. He seems to like her but she can’t be sure of that either. He may be earthbound, but his body is sublime. She’s devoted to it, an acolyte. Morné is tall and muscular and planed. His arms and legs seem to be made up of bundles of fibres. She wonders now why she favoured older men with their dewlaps and saggy scrotums and heavy eyelids and the hairs sprouting from their ears and nose. She understands that she is now receiving what her husbands had received when she was young: a transfusion of youth, a recognised therapy like sheep-foetus and human-placenta injections, something that old, rich people have always been able to buy in discreet clinics. She is only forty-three and she knows that Morné thinks she is well preserved – in great shape – but well preserved is not the same as young. When they make love in the small room where the yoga mats and the ladies’ hand weights and the boxing gloves are stored, she finds herself in a delirium undermined by anxiety because Morné is almost sixteen years younger than she is and almost certainly has other women closer to his own age. He understands the proprieties and never asks questions and never volunteers personal information although he is quite big on popular psychology. His voice is deep and measured – a lot older than his body – and he sounds as if he is talking in a cave. He goes about sex in a maddeningly efficient way, as if it’s an extension of the workout and he is on a schedule. They are able to embrace afterwards on a mat for a few sweaty minutes before he looks at his cheap watch. She bought him a present, an antique Rolex Prince from Burlington Arcade.

‘Thanks, Fleur. It’s beautiful, but I don’t want you to think we are having sex for some purpose. Ja, no, that would be wrong, and I don’t think you could handle it. I promise you I am not looking for anything. If you accept that, I will keep the watch, otherwise I must give it back now.’

‘No, please, I want you to have it.’