He refilled his glass. Dammit, he’d have to stay the night. My heart sank. He was a different man from the one who’d made me laugh and mopped up my dribble. I was filled with pity for him, and dread for what he was going to say. Just dump me and leave, I silently urged him. Get a cab and go.

‘But then you came along,’ he said. ‘Know something? Once I couldn’t have handled a woman like you.’

‘Why not?’

‘I would’ve felt threatened, know what I mean?’

‘Bloody hell!’ I snapped. ‘Not that old chestnut. Why can’t you men just get over it?’

He jerked back. ‘Listen, babes. I came here to tell you I love you.’

For a moment I couldn’t speak.

‘I’m sorry I was such an arse that day,’ he said. ‘I just felt like a spare prick at a funeral. Will you forgive me?’

There was a silence. Finally I nodded.

‘I think I fell for you when we were driving along the Al,’ he said. ‘That’s probably a first.’

I laughed, shakily. ‘It probably is.’

‘So we’re OK?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

He didn’t touch me. It was nothing like that. We just sat there together, listening to the drip, drip.

‘Remind me to fix that tap,’ he said.

Calvin’s mother was blind. This was one of the new things I discovered about his childhood. His father was a sadist and had enjoyed confusing her by moving objects around the house. He’d also enjoyed taunting his son.

‘There was a pile of sand in front of our house,’ said Calvin. ‘From some building work the old man had never finished. He used to get me to load the wheelbarrow with it, wheel it round the back and empty it. Then load it up and wheel it round the front, empty it out, and so on, all bloody afternoon.’

‘An early lesson in Nietzschean nihilism,’ I laughed.

Calvin wasn’t prone to self-pity; he just told me these things as a fact of life—which they were to him, of course.

‘Maybe he was doing me a favour,’ he shrugged. ‘It’s made me the man I am today.’

He didn’t speak again about his wife’s suicide. I didn’t prod this tender spot; needless to say I was consumed with curiosity, but it wasn’t my business. Maybe I should have asked him more—I realise it now. But at the time I was just revelling in his company, and our new openness together.