Reassembling myself for a stranger made me long for marriage. How easy it was to be with a body that was as familiar as one’s own, with no effort to be made! Surely any amount of boredom and resentment was preferable to this heart-pounding frenzy. When young, such preparations were thrilling. Nowadays it was a lengthy and humiliating operation and I wondered why I was doing it when I could be opening my door to an axe murderer. He’d sounded so strange and abrupt.

The doorbell rang as I was pulling on my leggings. Calvin must have driven at breakneck speed, or maybe he’d already been on his way and phoned from his car.

‘What’s happened?’ I asked. ‘Did you leave something behind?’

Calvin stepped into the hallway and kicked the door shut with his foot. He took me in his arms and kissed me.

Grabbing my hand, he led me upstairs, bumping against the wall as he kissed me again. We stumbled into the bedroom and onto my unmade bed.

‘Let’s get those panties off,’ he muttered.

To be honest, that first time was disappointing—clumsy and hasty. I wished we’d stayed kissing, and had got to know each other’s bodies before taking off our clothes. I’d felt so awkward that I’d switched off the light and couldn’t see his face. In the blackness I pictured the beautiful Angie. Was I just a rebound shag, as Azra had warned? And Calvin had stayed silent throughout; what was he thinking?

As it turned out, the same thing as me. For he leaned over, switched on the light, and said: ‘I’m glad we’ve got that over with. It’ll be better from now on, I promise.’

I burst out laughing. The old familiarity flooded back. I adored him. Adored him.

He cupped my face in his hands and kissed me with great tenderness. ‘You’re totally gorgeous,’ he said. ‘Have I told you that?’

‘No.’

‘This bit here …’ He lifted my arm and kissed my elbow. ‘And this bit here …’ He shifted himself down and kissed the dip behind my ankle bone. ‘And then, of course, there’s those eyebrows.’ He stroked them with his finger.

‘Are they that special?’

‘No. I just thought nobody might have remarked on them. At our age most things have been remarked upon so there’s not much choice left.’

‘Your eyebrows are quite ordinary too.’

He laughed, and flung himself back on the pillow. ‘I do like you,’ he said.

‘You didn’t seem to, when you mended my car.’

‘Yeah, but it seemed you couldn’t wait to get rid of me.’

‘And you couldn’t wait to get away.’

He paused. ‘It’s Angie’s birthday.’

‘Oh.’

‘She would have been seventy.’

We lay there side by side. I gazed at a stain on the ceiling, a tanned map from an ancient leak.