He went to the bathroom, peed, returned to the kitchen. I made the bed and dried myself, piled my damp hair on top of my head in a clip. When I had tied my kimono, I picked up my phone and looked at it – opened it with my passcode and flicked through it. Everything was as I had left it; nothing was amiss, and there were no texts or Whatsapp conversations that he could possibly object to so really, what was the problem if he looked at it from time to time? I slipped it into my kimono pocket. The kimono was made of fine white cotton that I knew to be slightly see-through – it had been chosen from M & S the week before Matthew moved in for precisely that quality. My grey fleece dressing gown with the hood had been chopped up for dusters.

I went into the kitchen just as Matthew was sliding the fried eggs onto toasted sourdough. Neat slices of avocado in a fan shape were to one side of the plate and as I sat, he leaned over and placed two slices of crisped prosciutto crossways on top of the eggs, then did the same on his. I had never had a boyfriend who thought that it mattered how the food looked on the plate.

He turned and replaced the pan on the hob, to cool down, then turned back and grabbed the hair on the back of my head, tipping my face up to meet his. He kissed me hard. Then he sat and said, ‘Eat up, it will get cold. This is breakfast as foreplay, by the way.’

I brought a knife down on a crispy piece of prosciutto and it crackled as it snapped and sank into the soft yolk of the egg. I cut into a piece of bread and lifted the whole forkful to my mouth while Matty watched me. I looked at him as I pushed the fork into my mouth and made an appreciative noise. The belt on my new white kimono was loose. I knew exactly what I was doing.

He reached out a hand to pull at the end of the belt on the kimono and I tapped the back of his knuckles sharply with the flat of my knife – too late, the kimono fell open.

‘Ow!’ he said, shaking the hand. ‘That’s domestic violence!’

‘What about eat up before it gets cold?’

‘Fuck …’ he muttered, but picked up his fork.

We ate in silence, looking at each other the whole while, and I thought about how, once our breakfast was done, I was going to rise from the chair, go over to him, lift the apron and straddle him and how he knew that was what I was going to do, and knew that I was enjoying making him wait.