Matty stirred in his sleep, opened his eyes briefly, gave a half-awake smile, then opened his arms for me to go and join him. I rose happily, slotted myself in between him and the back of the sofa, half-lying across him, and he wrapped his arms around my shoulders. Holding each other, pressed close, we dozed for a while.

After half an hour or so, he sat up a little, still holding me. Our tea had gone cold but he reached out for his wine glass, lifted his head awkwardly to take a sip, replaced it on the table.

‘God,’ he said, his voice husky from sleep, ‘I’ve just remembered I’ve got to go to Nottingham tomorrow, one-day course.’

I stroked his arm, thinking that I didn’t want him to ever leave the sofa, let alone go to Nottingham, thinking that I loved this sort of intimacy more than sex.

He sighed.

‘What time you got to be up?’ I asked.

‘Early,’ he said. ‘I’d better check the trains, give me your phone a mo.’

‘Where’s yours?’ I asked, as I took my phone out of my pocket.

‘Over there,’ he said. He waved a hand in the direction of the kitchen counter, then pulled me in a bit closer, one arm still around my shoulder, bending his head to kiss the top of mine as I unlocked my phone with one hand.

‘Are you still using the same number as your PIN?’ he asked. He meant my cashpoint PIN.

‘Yeah, I know …’ I said. He’d told me off about that before, and about the fact that I used the same password for everything, but my memory was so poor, I could never rely on retaining lots of different passwords and numbers.

‘You are just asking for your identity to be stolen,’ he said, as I handed him my phone.

13

There are people who need excitement more than they need anything else, more than love or money or sex – and nothing is more thrilling than the early days of a relationship. That’s why some people go from one lover to the next, recreating that early buzz. If you stay with someone when that has faded, how do you replace it? With the drama of jealousy, perhaps – or with jealousy’s Siamese twin, infidelity? Or with rows, with arguments – they make you feel alive just as the early obsession with someone can make you feel alive. Sticking a pin into the end of your thumb makes you feel alive, after all.

As far as relationships are concerned we are all doomed to achieve, in due course, the pain of clarity. There is so much that seems obvious in retrospect, but when it comes to love, the clues are always ambiguous.

*

One night, I said to Matty, quite casually, not meaning anything, ‘We should go out a bit more, we should make the effort. We don’t want to get too stuck in the mud.’