“Your consciousness needs lowering, not raising, if you ask me.”

“Oh, don’t be silly, Hugo. Anyway, I’m too busy to go to a group. I haven’t time.” She looked at her watch, put on her busy expression, waved for the bill. “Now, look, Hugo, you promise you’ll help me out with Mujid? Friday, we agreed. You can talk French to him, and ask him about Iraq. His English is awful, and my French is worse, so you can imagine what a nightmare it is trying to talk politics after a hard day’s work.”

“I don’t know why you take such people on.”

“I don’t. They just arrive. And I don’t know how to say no. Do you know, Mujid believes that not a single nation in the twentieth century won its independence without the support and intervention of the Soviet Union? At least, I think that’s what he thinks. It can’t be right, can it? I mean, what about Iran? But I just don’t know enough to answer back. I’m an ignorant fool.”

“I suppose you think men are better than women at saying no.”

“I don’t think it, I know it. And I also know that when men have other men to stay with them, they don’t run around cooking them meals like I do for Mujid, and worrying about whether they like them or not. Do they? So you see, I do need a consciousness-raising group after all.” She started to fish in her bag for money. “Is it your turn to pay, or mine? I think it’s mine.”

“I thought you paid last time.”

“No, I’m sure you did, don’t you remember, you only had a tenner and he was bloody rude about the change.” Kate counted out three notes and some silver, and began to struggle into her coat.

“Actually,” she said, “saying yes is my special technique for preserving myself. I know it doesn’t sound very logical, but it works. I don’t know why it works, but it does. It’s my way of keeping the upper hand.”

“I don’t think a group would like the sound of that.”

“No, it wouldn’t. That’s why I don’t go.” She said this with an air of triumph, as though she had scored a point, though what the point was neither of them could have said.