I was twenty-seven, and the only work I could find was interpreting, or subtitling films and documentaries, paid by the hour, or occasional stints reading scripts or subtitling documentaries for Riccarda’s friend. Sometimes I wasn’t paid for months.

Then one day one of my mother’s suburban protégées asked if she knew someone who could take over as a language instructor in September, to replace a colleague who had rushed off to Pakistan to take care of a sick mother. Two evening classes a week: Mondays in Holborn, Thursdays in Hendon.

‘I’ll do it,’ I said.

In October, Marco rang me – or perhaps I rang him – and I told him Riccarda had left London for good. (I had never yet admitted to him we had been lovers.) The job I was doing didn’t suit me. I found it frightening to teach twenty people how to read and write, and going out on the street or taking public transport made me anxious. I was looking after my parents’ flat while they were away, very tired, I didn’t sleep well and my voice and hands shook often. I didn’t tell him any of that, just that things hadn’t worked out quite the way I planned. I hadn’t gone back to university to complete my PhD, because I hadn’t got the second grant I applied for: without it, I couldn’t afford the time or the fee.

Two days later, Marco was at my doorstep.

‘Hey! I’m here to cheer you up.’

I spent the night talking to him over two bottles of red wine and then a half-bottle of whisky, talking in a way I never had before. By the time we were done with drinking and talking I was so drunk I didn’t remember what either of us had said.

For the next two days, we went wandering around London as if we hadn’t talked at all, looking for our old haunts and finding some of them gone – a cinema in South Kensington, a Chinese café in Bloomsbury.

‘You know, I thought you were going to celebrate your freedom and give me a great time in London. Treat me like a superstar. I thought we’d at least have fun. Instead, you’re treating me like an acquaintance. Or a stranger. And if you were entertaining a stranger, you would be doing more for him. Actually, London is boring. There’s so little to do.’

He was laughing, but he meant it.

I had been surprised and pleased to see him, but now I didn’t even know if I was really glad he’d come.