Elizabeth didn’t mind in the slightest, since she didn’t understand a word of it, and that same evening, Wilkes took her to a needle exchange, where he got some great pictures with a recovering heroin addict who had once stabbed his grandmother in the foot when she wouldn’t hand over her pension. A few days later, on their second date, he took her to a medical clinic, where he posted a photo of himself giving the thumbs-up sign while witnessing puberty blockers being administered to a child. On their third, they went to Les Misérables. And on their fourth, and most disappointingly, to bed, although he insisted on her logging into a special sex app on his phone first to confirm that she was giving consent. Otherwise, he said, he would feel like he was committing rape. Throughout the eight months of their relationship since then, however, not only had she been forced to give official online consent every time they slept together, but he had refused to stay overnight in Elizabeth’s bed, claiming that he could not possibly justify sleeping in a house that could comfortably fit thirty people but in which only five currently resided, returning to his own apartment as soon as their passion had been spent, which was generally quite quickly.

‘There’s a tortoise now,’ Elizabeth told him. ‘So now we are six, as A. A. Milne would say.’

‘Amazing to think that a tortoise is living better than most humans,’ he replied, shaking his head and immediately posting the comment to Twitter.

‘It’s hardly his fault,’ she protested. ‘He was just shoved into a box and handed over to my mum. I’m sure if he knew about the plight of the homeless, he’d be very sympathetic.’

‘It would behoovened you not to make such comments,’ said Wilkes, turning away from her. ‘It would really behoovened you.’ And she shrugged, making a mental note to look that word up later, since she was certain that it wasn’t actually real. ‘Still, I appreciate you.’

‘I appreciate you too,’ she replied, knowing how important it was to Wilkes that he say this as often as possible, rather than ‘I love you.’ The phrase ‘I love you’, he claimed, was too focussed on his feelings, which only sustained the patriarchy, while ‘I appreciate you’ recognized her special qualities.