They part at Liverpool Street Station. A kiss. A hug. Judith goes to wait in line for a taxi – the black money-eating scarabs edging forward to devour their prey. Jomier trundles his suitcase down the escalator to the westbound Central Line platform in the bowels of the earth. The train is crowded. Passengers knock their shins on Jomier’s suitcase. An automated voice warns Jomier that Shepherd’s Bush Station is closed. He alights at Holland Park and waits in the drizzle for the 94 bus. One comes and goes: it is full. Jomier cracks. He hails a taxi which takes him on the last leg of his journey home.

Jomier is happy to be home. Jomier is always happy to be home. Tilly was never happy to be home. To her a holiday was a break from drudgery and routine: after returning from Tuscany or Provence or Crete, she sulked for a week. It exacerbated her disgruntlement to see Jomier’s spirits rise as he sat down at his desk in his study, to open the mail that had arrived in absentia, calculate the cost of the holiday and write up his journal.

Since his divorce Jomier has adjusted his back-to-normal routine. He no longer rushes to open his post or look at his email because he knows it will mostly be computer-generated junk mail and spam. The spreadsheet, too, can wait until the morning – a pleasure held in reserve. Jomier goes to his bedroom to unpack his suitcase. He puts dirty clothes in a pile on the floor; a clean shirt back into his shirt drawer, jerseys into his jersey drawer; clean socks into his sock drawer; suits and trousers onto hangers in his wardrobe. Every item has its allotted place. Jomier takes the pile of dirty clothes to the bathroom and puts them in the laundry basket from which his Brazilian cleaner Maria will remove them when she comes in after the New Year. He takes a thermostatically controlled power shower. Then, cleansed from head to foot, he changes into fresh but familiar old clothes, cooks himself a simple supper, reads The Economist while he eats it at his kitchen table, then moves through to his living room and settles down in front of his Panasonic Viera flat-screen TV.