‘Why thank you, Mr Bannerman. Goodbye, young lady.’ Schumacher shook their hands solemnly. ‘It’s been a pleasure,’ he said. ‘If you should change your mind, about the drink I mean, give us a call. We’re at the Hotel Regent in the Avenue Louise.’

‘I’ll do that.’

And when they had gone Mrs Schumacher said, ‘They haven’t even finished their drinks. He seems a very strange young man, doesn’t he? You don’t think he’s trying to avoid us, do you, Henry?’

‘They struck me,’ Schumacher said thoughtfully, ‘as two young people with rather a lot on their minds.’

II

Bannerman watched her undress in the moonlight that flooded in through open shutters. The room was cold and he shivered. He knew this was a mistake. Afterwards, it would only be all the more difficult. But he wanted her, with every fibre of himself.

‘Let me,’ he said.

She had slipped out of her jeans and panties and stood only in her T-shirt. Bannerman ran his hands over its intimate softness, over the swellings of her small breasts. Then behind her, pulling her to him, feeling the smoothness of her buttocks and lifting the shirt up over her head. He dropped it on the floor and kissed her, his tongue in her mouth, seeking out every part of it. Then he lifted her and carried her to the bed.

Afterwards they lay still for a long time, curled up in one another’s arms, each reluctant to be the one to break the spell. Finally it was Bannerman who rolled over and turned on the bedside lamp. They blinked in its sudden brightness. She pulled the sheet up to wrap around herself and lay on her side watching him. ‘I wish . . .’ she said. But her voice trailed away and she never said what it was she wished.

But Bannerman could guess. ‘It probably wouldn’t have worked out,’ he said. ‘It’s probably as well that you’re going.’

And for the first time she knew for certain that he didn’t want her to go. But somehow it was all too late. They would go their separate ways though neither of them wanted it. Neither of them had been able to summon the courage to face the alternative.

She reached up and pulled his head down so that she could kiss him, taste him again, reassure herself about what had gone before. ‘It was perfect,’ she whispered. ‘You and me. It’s never been like that before.’

Bannerman pulled away, rolling over on to his back and staring up at the ceiling. ‘Perfection,’ he said, ‘comes only once. It’s never the same a second time. Or a third. You spend the rest of your life trying to recapture a lost illusion.’

She was silent then for a very long time. Before finally she said in a tiny strained voice, ‘Doesn’t it mean anything to you?’