‘Me too,’ I said. ‘I mean, I don’t wake up in the night thinking about cake. I don’t dream about cake. But when I taste a top-notch cake, I hope I have the humility to recognise it for what it is.’

She was starting to laugh. I took another forkful, then passed the plate back over to her.

‘I feel sorry,’ she said, eating, with sadly downcast eyes, ‘for all the little people out there in the world who will never get to taste this cake.’ Instead of crocodile tears, she wore two tiny cake-crumbs on her cheek like decorative moles.

‘Those little people will go to their graves never knowing what cake could really be,’ I told her.

While I was talking, she was nodding and methodically demolishing what remained of the cake. Finally, I looked down at the plate: she had left me a tiny, carefully crafted square, as if designed for an insect’s birthday celebrations.

‘That’s for you,’ she said.

‘Is that all?’ I said.

‘Do you think you deserve more?’ she asked. I felt a faint cooling of the temperature. She checked her watch and suddenly drained the last of her coffee in a businesslike way.

‘No,’ I said.

She started shrugging her coat on.

‘Can I see you tomorrow after work?’ I said.

‘I’m working late tomorrow. I’ll see you on Friday.’

‘What time?’

‘Eight. In here. If you’re not here I’ll know you can’t be bothered.’

She leaned over and gave me a brief kiss on the cheek: she smelled of lemons. I thought of all the times she had kissed me on the mouth and suddenly felt a sadness worse than anything I had ever felt, apart from when Big Jacky died.

‘I love you,’ I said quietly, staring at the ant’s cake.

She looked at me with a funny, half-stern expression.

‘Good,’ she said. ‘Maybe I love you back.’

I watched her go out the door and turn right into the dwindling afternoon, down into a crammed street of expensive restaurants and dirty-plush hostess bars, wincing against the wind as she turned up her collar and then disappeared from sight. I speared the ant’s cake delicately, on the end of one fork’s prong so it wouldn’t break. It tasted briefly wonderful, like swallowing the best split second you ever had.

I woke up so happy the next morning. The autumn sunshine came through the curtain and stroked my eyelids, wheedling them open. I felt full of possibilities and second chances.

Ten minutes later, the clock-radio clicked on and a familiar voice flooded the room. It was Brian Nixon, the official spokesman for McGee’s lot. He was always on the radio and television now since the ceasefires, blathering magnanimously about ‘the two traditions’.