I should also feel a certain sympathy, I suppose. I, of all people, know how Andrew is the kind of man a young woman could become obsessed with. It’s his unknowability: the hints of goodness and kindness behind the impression that he is wrestling with something difficult. Wrestling, perhaps, but I have a sure and certain instinct that however much difficulty he is enduring, he will never become difficult himself. Unlike so many men, he will never turn his anger outwards. He is the kind of young man who makes a woman want to say to him, I know what you are going through. Let’s go through it together.

‘Ruth, look,’ he says then, his expression still blank, ‘I think we might just have to accept that we’re handling this differently. We’re different people, I’m not saying one way is good and one bad, we’re just different, that’s all.’

‘And that’s it?’ Her voice screeches up a notch. ‘Seriously, is that all you’ve got to say?’ She’s close to hysteria.

He cuts across her. ‘No, that’s not it. I care for you, Ruth, you know that. We’re both finding this really hard.’

This takes the wind out of her sails. Her shoulders go down. She seems to deflate a little, if it’s possible for someone as skinny as her to deflate.

‘I know you do,’ she says, her voice an octave lower. ‘Just don’t ignore me, okay? Isn’t this hard enough as it is? I need some contact with you …’

They are standing outside his house or flat – I presume – unless he is on his way to a friend’s place, but then how would she have known to be waiting for him?

Her arms are hanging loosely at her side but she makes a gesture with one of them towards the row of neat small semis. ‘Want to, I don’t know, get a takeaway or something?’ She is trying to invite herself in.

He shakes his head vehemently then, with more firmness than I would have expected from him. ‘I’m not ready, just, okay? Just cos I … What you did still wasn’t right and I didn’t want to – and now look, now. Sorry but you just have to accept we’re different people and you keep pressing for something I don’t want and I just wish you’d accept that, okay?’