Jomier has no dress sense. He wears off-the-peg suits to drinks parties; pale blue shirts; dull ties. Jomier knows what is meant by ‘smart casual’ – the linen jacket or dark blue suit; the white shirt, open at the neck. Before the break-up, Tilly had given him ties from Harrods or shirts from Gieves & Hawkes as Christmas and birthday presents. Now, the supply cut off, Jomier has reverted to the status quo ante. He buys his clothes from Marks & Spencer and wears a tie. He does not like a naked neck – in men or in women: the skin between chin and breastbone is the first to wither with age. No amount of Botox can get rid of those turkey wrinkles. But Jomier does not wear a tie to conceal these signs of ageing. He wears it, he tells himself, to stop draughts going down his chest. If this makes him seem fogeyish – so be it. Jomier is not vain. He avoids looking at himself in the mirror. He does not like what he sees. His face. This since the Fall. Since the bust-up. Since he learned about Tilly and Max. The mirror had lied. It had not shown the horns growing out of his head. The Narcissus-smile of self-admiration was the smile of a sucker. A fool.

Jomier prefers cocktail parties to dinner parties – drinks to supper. At a drinks party he is not trapped between two women but can hop from person to person like a bee going from flower to flower, taking about as much time as a bee takes to pick up the pollen before moving on. At a drinks party Jomier can talk to men as easily as to women, and in five minutes of conversation everything worth saying has been said. He does not have to eat heavy, indigestible food at ten at night, but can be home in time to eat a sandwich in front of his wide-screen Panasonic television.