‘May I use your telephone? I think I’ll give my parents a bell, if I may. I won’t talk for long.’

‘You can talk as long as you bloody well like. Use the phone by my bed.’

‘Thanks.’

He went into her room and sat cautiously on the unmade bed. She didn’t use a duvet, he noticed. He’d have thought she’d be a bit more up to date than fiddling around with sheets and blankets. A lot of pillows were heaped at the head of the bed. He bent and let his head droop into the hollow where her head had lain.

His mother had always said that sleeping with more than one pillow was bad for you – bad for the spine, and probably for the soul, he thought; too much comfort definitely leading to a decline in moral standards. He wanted to laugh again, lie here on Clara’s bed and yell with laughter, make the ornaments on her mantelpiece rattle, shake the pictures off their hooks, and set the curtains swinging.

‘Not,’ he said aloud, ‘that I have anything to laugh about.’ He got up from the bed and walked back into the kitchen. She was sitting where he had left her. She looked round as he came into the room.

‘That was quick,’ she said.

‘I haven’t done it yet.’

‘Cold feet?’

‘Something like that.’

‘I should ring them if I were you. You’re going to have to do it sometime, no point in putting it off and off. Unless …’

‘Unless what?’

‘Unless you don’t mean to ring them at all. Just disappear out of their lives. Phhhttt. You don’t seem to be that sort of man to me. So ring them sooner rather than later.’

‘You know nothing about what goes on in my head.’

‘That’s true. But you don’t seem to me to be cruel.’

He considered the word with care. He didn’t like it.

‘I am not cruel.’

‘Have another cup of tea?’

He shook his head.

‘Coffee?’

‘For heaven’s sake,’ he said in exasperation.

‘Well, at least tell me what all this is about. I can’t give you advice if—’

‘I never asked you for advice. I don’t need advice. I can advise myself.’

She raised her eyebrows but said nothing.

‘The trouble with women is that they either offer you tea or advice.’

‘Or both,’ she said.

‘Are we joking here? I thought we were being serious. Why do you have to joke?’

‘It wasn’t meant as a joke, merely a rather banal reflection on myself. Do sit down. I hate people standing over me.’ She sipped her tea and watched him as he walked round the table and sat down.

‘Anyway,’ she said after a long silence, ‘the tea’s cold. You wouldn’t have got much joy from it.’

‘I don’t really understand why you would suggest that I am cruel.’

‘Sorry. Definitely the wrong word. I am sorry. I think I probably meant thoughtless. Careless of other people’s feelings.’