And there is the Viagra. Jomier punches the figures on the rubbery buttons of his electronic calculator. Two capsules a week means £250 a year! Add extras for holidays and he should budget for an annual expenditure on Viagra of around £300. Judith does not offer to make a contribution to that expense; he pops the pill discreetly; it is never mentioned; the fiction is maintained that he is aroused by the scent and sight and touch of this desirable woman. But as he looks at the number 300 on his calculator, Jomier asks himself whether Judith who, to judge from the sounds of pleasure that she emits as the rhythmic undulations of her well-tuned body gather pace, and the ecstatic cries as she arrives at her perfectly calibrated climax, does not in fact get more out of sex than he does? Indeed, does Jomier get anything much from sex any more beyond dubiously pleasurable sensations and the reassurance that he is still up to it – that he is still a man?

A year of Viagra:        £300

A year of Indians:        £1,500

A year of movies:        £700

Future holidays:        £3,500

Gifts:                £300

Miscellaneous:        £300

These estimates suggest that Judith will cost Jomier £6,600 over twelve months or, with tax at 20p in the pound on his investment income, a gross sum of more than £8,250 a year! And that is just ‘above the line’. More worrying for Jomier, as he thinks about the effects of the global credit crunch on his personal finances, is the possibility that this expenditure on Judith is just the start. If he and Judith were to share a house, would she share the costs? Would she pay half the Council Tax? Half the utility bills? Or would she take the same ‘How unromantic. How unchivalrous. How ungallant. How bourgeois. How penny-pinching’ attitude that she had shown when he had presented her with the Venice spreadsheet? Was Jomier about to fall yet again for the age-old confidence trick perpetrated by women on men? Is he, for Judith, anything more than a cashpoint, handyman and perambulating vibrator?

Tilly: you know the cost of everything and the value of nothing. Had she been right? Was he repeating the same mistake with Judith? How can you measure the cost-effectiveness of love? Has it not always been incumbent upon the male of the species to cherish his chosen partner, and has not cherishing always involved some expense? And what if he had fallen for a woman whose self-esteem depended on eating at the Ivy, the Wolseley or the Café Anglais? Jomier should be grateful that no more is expected of him than stumping up for tofu and seaweed when they shop together at Whole Foods, paying for cinema tickets, and footing the bill for their weekly Indian.