He thought about it. ‘Yes. It probably means more to me than you’ll ever know. But that’s now. What it will mean next week, or next month, or next year – I don’t know.’ She lay quite still. ‘A week ago,’ he said, ‘there was no one in my life. Now there are two people.’ He heard her head turn but he didn’t look. ‘You and . . . Tania. And you are leaving. Sometimes life is like that.’

‘Yes.’ And somehow that one word was the final acceptance of their parting, that whatever they might feel now there was no real future in it. Then she asked, ‘Why does she mean so much to you?’

And he wanted to tell her. He knew that tomorrow she would be gone and it wouldn’t matter any more.

‘Somewhere’ – he gestured vaguely in the moonlight – ‘there is a child.’ His laughter was hollow and laced with bitterness. ‘Not even a child any more. Very nearly a young woman. A part of me. My daughter.’ He turned to look at her, but there was nothing in her face. ‘I’ve never seen her. Not even a photograph.’

‘You were married?’

‘No. Her mother was a girl I knew a long time ago. She was just seventeen. Worked in telesales on my first newspaper. I was eighteen. She was a shy girl. Didn’t know much about anything. Least of all sex. She thought she loved me, and maybe she did. I used to pretend that I loved her too, even to myself. It was a kind of growing-up game I played. Testing her, testing myself, playing with both our emotions to see what would happen. I was just a stupid boy who thought the world had given him a raw deal. Anyway, I took her virginity. Led her into it when she really didn’t want to. I had to promise that I loved her, you know, the way kids do. And it was easy to say it; it’s always easy to say when you don’t mean it.’ He paused. ‘Much harder when you do.’

For several long minutes he was lost in recollection. All the finely etched memories that would be with him always. ‘She got pregnant, of course, and I thought the whole world had fallen in on me. Didn’t give her feelings a second thought. It was all about me. How I felt. How it would affect my future. I tried to persuade her to get rid of it, but she wouldn’t. She just cried and cried and said she would have to tell her parents. So I said I would marry her.’ He shook his head sadly, and the flicker of an ironic smile crossed his face. ‘She turned me down. No great fuss or anything. Just said, no. Didn’t want to marry me. She would have the child and stay with her parents if they would have her.’