“Yes,” he said, “I’ll give you a ring,” and he went downstairs to his car, which he had driven right into the garage. It was the first time the garage had been used for its proper function since our arrival, and there was hardly room for a car amongst the junk. I followed him halfway down the stairs and watched him get into it. I felt as well acquainted with that car as I did with the man himself; it seemed as much a part of what had occurred as any more fleshy detail. Wyndham Farrar, Oundle and ENSA, who had an old maroon Jaguar car and a great weakness for braised celery. I leaned on the banisters and gazed at him intently as he looked in his pockets for the key. Now that he was safely out of reach I felt the dim beginnings of regret, for I knew that I did not know him, but that if things had been otherwise I could have loved him. Somewhere I had gone wrong; I had opened myself either too little or too much, I had not faced the choice that I should have faced and I had ended up with neither infidelity nor satisfaction.

He switched the engine on, then looked up to me and waved, a little plaintively. I waved back, and I could not for the life of me have said whether he was plaintive from disappointed passion, from disappointed lust or from a bad headache. He started to back towards the garage door, and I turned away and began to go up the steps, but just as I turned I heard him shout.

“Emma,” he yelled, and I turned round, expecting I don’t know what clarification, and he gestured and pointed towards the doors and said, “Come on down and wave me out, Emma, there’s a good girl, I can’t see a bloody thing round this corner.”

I nearly retorted that I was in my dressing gown, but thought better of it and slopped down the stairs to him in my slippers.

“You should have thought of this,” I said as I took up my position by the corner of the doorway. “You should have backed in.”

“Oh yes,” he said crossly, over his shoulder, “you think of everything, don’t you. You’re the one who never makes mistakes. Stop telling me how to drive, you don’t know anything about driving.”