But Camilla had another grudge, too, for which she punished me with truth. And that was my lack of it. For unlike her I did tinker with my history, I did leave out a little something here, remove a little nothing there, confuse, conceal, conflate. I didn’t add on anything, notice, I simply took away. I clipped and pruned my past life more ruthlessly than if I’d been the monstrous moral housewife – the Birmingham Ripper – let loose in the cutting room for an hour. So that in return for Camilla’s epic sagas I had only milk and water fairy stories to relate, impossibly lame adventures into which I’d been dragged kicking, affairs of the heart that were not near my heart, passions that barely quickened my pulses, encounters in which I wasn’t there to be encountered. I even tried to convince Camilla for a while that my penis had never truly risen except for her. ‘So how did you ever effect an entry?’ she enquired. I thought about saying that I never had. ‘Either by bending it double and pressing with my thumbs,’ I decided to explain instead. ‘Or by using my index fingers as splints. It’s not comfortable but it’s better than nothing. There’s a lot more of that sort of thing going on than most women realize.’ ‘I see,’ she said. She didn’t believe a word I told her.

So why did I go on lying? Why? – that’s easy to answer. Because I didn’t want to hurt her. (Hurt her? Camilla? Yes, yes, I know – but old habits die hard.) Because I didn’t want to threaten her with who I’d been. Because I wanted to clear my decks (while keeping hers full); and because I wanted her to understand that if ever any beauty I’d desired, and got – ’twas but a dream of her. That was an insult for which she never forgave me?