For a while, a succession of young women – Tisha, Fifi and Lili – encircle her, borrow her make-up, wear her knickers, take her earrings and her money. And then there are young men. Students and struggling artists, who are with her at all times, carrying her parcels, making her joints, fetching her bottles, ampoules and needles, pouring her drinks. If, as she says (and for the longest while he believes her), he is the most important presence in her life, then why this constant need for others? He stays silent, but once he protests when one of her young men, a Swiss-German acolyte of Osho who calls himself Hanuman, pasty-faced, small and hairy in a vest and shorts, indicates that Mehran is unwanted.

Yet the vaguest suspicion that someone else may lay claim to any part of his affections turns Marvi’s voice into a howling wind in the branches of a tall tree, and her body into a weeping willow. He has become almost superstitious about mentioning anyone in his life to her, female or even male. Strangely, suddenly, whoever he becomes close to disappears from his world if she chances to meet them. That he can understand. She is gracious, and when she wants to, she can create an aura of beauty and utter charm around herself; but she is manifestly, regally possessive. One of her habits, on the rare occasions they meet friends in her flat, is to hand him some object, a lighter or a watch or a chain, and mention that he had been searching for it that morning on his way to work. Or she leaves some garment on a sofa where he seems to have abandoned it (he has a habit of slinging sweaters over his shoulders and leaving them, and all his other things, wherever he puts them down). It appears he lives with her, or sleeps there more often than he does, which is nearly never. He knows she hides his things, to do this. Just once, he says: ‘That lighter isn’t mine, and you know I wasn’t at your house this morning.’ She winces. The friend he’s with tells him: ‘You embarrassed both me and Marvi; you should have let it pass.’

What makes him afraid, at times, is his feeling that he has only to mention a relationship, a future prospect, a trip – anything, in short, that might take him away from her – for it to be blighted by her jealousy, bound to go wrong.

‘You reach a point and an age where it’s hard to find someone other than your current mate, even if you’re looking,’ Lilla writes. ‘Who do we find that’s custom made for us? It becomes harder to meet people, and our standards and expectations rise as we grow older. We turn more and more to each other for companionship, we solitaries, but friends don’t keep you warm at night.’