That’s what always happens. No sooner have I slept with a woman than I’m already on my way out of the door.

I imagine what it’d be like not to see each other again, ever. The first hours would be a mixture of relief and shame. It would be forgivable: most journalists sleep with one another on overseas trips. But Marie-France might be pregnant with our son. She’d probably have an abortion because I jumped on the next British Airways flight with sufficient stocks of gin on board, rather than agreeing to stay and start a family.

I must be mad!

“Okay then,” says Marie-France, bending down to pick up her camera bag and her rucksack.

Now, I think. Say it, Henri! Do things differently this time.

That same old “this time”!

“Take care,” she mumbles, and leans forward for the obligatory kiss on each cheek. Air-kiss left, air-kiss right.

Go? Or stay?

I’m overcome with curiosity at the completely fresh possibilities I might discover by staying in Paris with Marie-France instead of returning to London or flying on to Kabul. A jolt inside me. Come on! Be an adult for once!

And yet . . . I don’t know where this contrariness comes from. It’s accompanied by a sense of “this time, this way.”

As we touch cheeks for an extra kiss, I whisper, “I’d like to stay with you,” but even as I speak the words I know it isn’t true. I dismiss my shock, thinking that this must be normal and every man feels this way the first time he stays.

She hugs me tightly and whispers, “I still hate you, but not as much as I did,” and clings to me.

I skip my onward flight to London, don’t take my other flight to Kabul, and stay in Paris instead. Three months later, Marie-France shows me the ultrasound scan. “I want the child, but I don’t want you,” she says.

“Of course you don’t want me. You’re always saying that. But I don’t believe you, so I’m going to stay on regardless.”

She throws her arms around my neck and says, “You’re right.” But she never says “I love you” because she can’t and neither can I. I do know Marie-France well enough, though, to realize that she’s continually testing my affection for her. She’s looking for proof that I want her. She keeps sending me away so that then I can come back to her. This is the only way for it almost to be love, because we both know that it isn’t really.