The man who had served Charlie and Lund yesterday—Signor Grilli himself? Charlie wondered—approached their table. Instead of asking if he could take their order, he said, ‘Is okay, I see you’re no ready.’ He might as well have said, ‘I can see you’re too busy rowing to think about food.’

‘Is it true?’ Simon asked. ‘Are you seeing Lund?’

‘I’m not going to dignify that with a—’

‘Then why say it? Is it your new hobby, making me look like a twat in front of as many people as possible?’

‘You? Oh, they loved you. I was the despicable one.’

‘You encouraged them to despise you! Boasting about something that ought to disgust you, as if you think being a rapist’s girlfriend is something to be proud of.’

‘Ex-girlfriend.’ Charlie pretended to look at the menu. The tables around theirs had fallen silent. Even the music playing in the background sounded as if it was deliberately leaving lots of spaces between the notes. Charlie spoke clearly, for the benefit of any eavesdroppers. ‘Funny—I seem to have gone from one extreme to the other. From a man who has sex with women against their will to one who won’t shag one woman, not even his own fiancée, even if she begs . . .’

‘If you carry on like this, I’m leaving.’ Simon pushed his chair back.

‘The restaurant, or our relationship?’ Charlie asked. ‘Just so as I understand the exact nature of the threat.’

‘Do you want a smack in the face?’

‘At least if you hit me, we’d be touching.’ She was only half joking.

‘When it suits you, you make me the enemy. Whenever you’re feeling shit about something, I get the brunt of it. You knew I’d never hung a picture.’

‘What? You haven’t?’ Charlie laughed. ‘Actually, I didn’t know. Bloody hell, Simon . . .’

‘You knew, and you wanted to show me up, because you’d been shown up: forced to boast about the fuck-up that nearly ruined your life, and still might. You seem to want it to!’

‘Stop.’ Charlie gripped her menu with both hands.

‘Except you weren’t forced at all—it was your choice. You could have said, “Yeah, okay, I made a mistake. But I didn’t know what he was when I got involved with him.” Why couldn’t you have said that?’

‘Why don’t you write me a script next time? The press office did it two years ago. They told me what to say.’

‘There’s no point in us talking.’ Simon picked up his menu, held it between his face and Charlie’s. ‘Let’s get something to eat while we can, before they call us back in.’

‘Do you think they will?’ It was almost a comfort to think about Milward and Dunning; against them, Charlie and Simon were allies.

‘I would. We’re better than they are.’

‘I’m not hungry.’ Charlie sighed.