They had lunch in a dim corner of a small brasserie Frankie knew. He didn’t eat much – he felt hollow yet slightly nauseous – but she demolished her meal greedily. A little splash of orange daubed her chin and her lips were shiny. He had wanted to order two glasses of house wine but she’d put her hand on his arm.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Let’s stay clear-headed.’

Adrian asked the waiter for a bottle of sparkling water and drank two glasses with trembling hands. He didn’t know what he was doing here, with an unfamiliar woman and blood roaring in his ears and a queasy sensation in his stomach. He didn’t know what to say to her; there was nothing to say, until he kissed her, because he was in a fug of terror. But he couldn’t kiss her. What had he been thinking of?

He started telling her a rambling anecdote about the last audition he’d been to, then heard himself talking about the lovely, disastrous feeling when you stood in the wings, waiting to walk on stage. He had a feeling he’d told her this before, a long time ago when she was just an ordinary woman, but he couldn’t remember. He couldn’t remember anything. His voice, which didn’t belong to him any more but to a ridiculous stranger, dribbled away and he stared at her while his breath rose raggedly in his chest.

‘If I kissed you,’ he said hoarsely, ‘what would you do?’

‘I don’t know until it happens.’

So he leant forward over his plate, feeling as if he was sliding towards the edge of a high cliff, and held her face in his hands, very carefully, and kissed her on her pink, full lips which opened under his. She gave a murmur deep in her throat. He drew back and tried to look at her, though he felt dizzy. She smiled widely at him: strong white teeth. Carnivorous.

‘I’d say, I’ve wanted you to do that for years. And I’d say, you mustn’t.’

It was as if a barrier – that dirty great boulder in his chest – had crumbled away and lust flooded through him, a pure transparent gush of sensation splashing through his veins, knocking his head back like someone punching him brutally on his chin. He groaned and put his hand in her hair like that first night, and he kissed her again, wanting to dissolve into her, to disappear.

‘People are staring.’

‘Can we go somewhere?’

‘What – some cheap hotel for ten minutes?’ She sat up and pushed her hair behind her ears.

‘No! I didn’t mean it like that. That’s not how I think of you. I’m just – oh Jesus, bowled over.’

‘Are you? Really?’

‘Since that evening, you’re all I can think about. I can’t just walk away.’