‘No, no, don’t turn away. I’ll be awake all night in torment.’

‘But that’s what you want.’

‘Not on my own. I need you to help me.’

‘I thought I already had. I’ve made you jealous.’

‘I want more.’

‘All right, the next time I see your friend I won’t just play footsie with him under the table. Now, can you go to sleep?’

‘Sharon, what do you mean by next time you won’t just? Are you trying to tell me that you already have?’

‘Of course.’

‘Today? In Harrods?’

‘Barney, what did you think was happening this afternoon? I suppose you thought we were discussing science fiction.’

‘I did actually, yes.’

‘Ha!’

‘You mean we weren’t discussing science fiction?’

‘We certainly weren’t. I don’t know what you were doing.’

‘I was buying him bloody milkshakes, for God’s sake.’

‘And you know why he asked for milkshakes, don’t you?’

‘No, Sharon I don’t. But my guess is that it’s either because he’s got ulcers or he likes sticking straws up his nose.’

‘They take longer to prepare, that’s why. And the more time you could be encouraged to spend at the counter, the more time Fitz and I could spend together.’

‘I don’t believe it.’

‘Don’t believe it.’

‘All that ingenuity just so that you could play footsie under the table?’

‘Oh no, we could do that while you were there. When you were away we did other things.’

‘Under the table?’

‘And over. And round the side.’

‘What kind of other things?’

‘You know. We took greater liberties.’

‘I’d appreciate more candour, Sharon.’

‘We went a little further.’

‘In which direction, Sharon?’

‘In every direction you can think of, Barney!’

I sat bolt upright in my bed and for the first time in what seemed like a small lifetime I opened both my eyes. With my left hand I unlaced the neck of her nightdress and with my right I fished out the nearest of her breasts. ‘How could you?’ I asked, bending over it. I expostulated directly with the nipple, not bothering with the formality of going through its owner. ‘How could you?’ I repeated, watching it grow and harden under the friction of my fingers, watching it bake and swelter in the furnace of my breath.

She did not, like Tess of the D’Urbervilles, whisper with a dry mouth, ‘In the name of our love, forgive me!’

And therefore I could not, like Angel Clare, reply, ‘O Tess’, or even ‘O Sharon – forgiveness does not apply to the case. You were one person; now you are another. My God – how can forgiveness meet such a grotesque – prestidigitation as that!’

What she said instead, and rather crossly too, because this was Finchley and not Wessex, was ‘Barney, I thought this was what you wanted.’