‘Rules is rules,’ replied the officer, who reminded her a little of Engelbert Humperdinck in appearance. Jowly. Sideburny. Sexy, if he had been forty years younger.

‘And that’s who you are, is it?’ asked Beverley. ‘A rules man? No independent thought? Just doing what the bosses say?’

‘They’re the ones who pay my wages,’ said the man. ‘I’m afraid your son will have to use the regular line like everyone else.’

Beverley took a step back, rather impressed by the man’s subtle insult.

‘Touché,’ she said, before turning back to Pylyp and throwing herself upon him, like Elizabeth Taylor launching herself on Montgomery Clift when he agrees not to give her a frontal lobotomy in Suddenly, Last Summer. She would have liked to kiss him on the lips, but photographers were usually lurking around Heathrow in search of minor celebrities, not to mention members of the public with their smartphones, and she couldn’t take the risk. ‘Well, stay in touch,’ she said. ‘Call me every day. And enjoy the funeral. No, that’s not quite right, is it? One doesn’t enjoy a funeral. What should I say? Experience the funeral? Try not to let it upset you too much?’

Pylyp smiled and ran his fingers along her cheek, causing her to purr like a cat. ‘One week,’ he said. ‘Then I will be back. And I will bring my big Ukrainian dick with me.’

‘I thought you were leaving that behind in London?’ she asked, regretting the remark immediately, for he looked utterly confused. ‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘Bad joke. I’ve got the tortoise. I suppose he’ll have to do for now.’

PRO-SEMITIC

There were delays on the Tube and a dreadful whisper was spreading among the commuters that a man had thrown himself under a train at Sloane Square. Like the rumour, Nelson Cleverley found himself making his way slowly along the platform at Victoria Station, which was crowded with passengers, most of whom were betraying their impatience by pushing against each other as they fought for every square inch of available space.

He was wearing his pale blue scrubs, which at least meant that he didn’t feel that he was going to pass out with the heat. Everywhere he looked, beautiful young people were talking to each other or scrolling through their phones, and they seemed so comfortable in their own skin that it bewildered him. The girls all wore summer dresses and he stared at their legs, which were lean, tanned and sexy, trying to feel some flicker of desire. The boys, too, seemed so confident in their shorts and T-shirts, silver rings on middle fingers, string bracelets strapped across wrists. He looked at their legs, too, and wondered why they seemed so much trimmer and hirsute than his own, which verged on flabby and hairless. He counted the items of clothing on his body and it came to a total of five: polyester scrub top and trousers, boxer shorts, socks and a pair of old trainers. Standard hospital wear. And even though he knew that he was probably the least fashionable person in London and the South-East, he appreciated the fact that his outfit made him stand out in the crowd. As he made his way along the platform to the exact spot where he knew the train doors would open, should it ever arrive, people stepped aside to let him through, as if he was en route to an emergency. He took some pleasure from this rare sense of authority.