‘But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord.’ Jomier often wished that he could believe that Max would get his comeuppance in the world to come. ‘Vengeance is mine, says the Lord. I will repay.’ But Jomier does not believe. He notes, too, that it was David who displeased the Lord, not Bathsheba. Even God is duped by women. Bathsheba surely knew that David could see her naked in her bath. Why else would she take it on the roof in full view of the palace? So too the hitching up of Tilly’s bikini top was for the benefit of the hairy alpha-male Max – the connoisseur of cantaloupe melons. Uriah the Hittite – Uriah the poor provider – versus David the Lord’s Anointed, legendary slayer of Goliath – cool, courageous, rich. Nolo contendere.

Jomier keeps his thoughts about Bathsheba to himself. He expresses them in his journal which is now password-protected, though he knows that it would be easily bypassed were his computer ever to be seized by the thought police. Failing to find paedophile downloads, they would extract evidence of misogyny, that second of the Seven Deadly Sins.

Is Jomier a misogynist? Or a gynophile – a lover of women? Both. Both to extremes. Jomier’s earliest memories are of a preoccupation with the female of his species: an emotional preoccupation – a tenderness for Belinda, a girl with a squint at his nursery school; and a physical preoccupation. An early memory – being surprised by his mother as he examined the private parts of Sally, the girl next door. In the garden. A summer’s day. Rebuke. A smack. He did not understand what he had done wrong. Was it not natural to be curious about the physical differences between the sexes, shrouded by navy-blue knickers, hidden between closed legs? His mother had been evasive. One opening, perhaps, but not the other. She did not specify which was permitted, which forbidden. Nor had Jomier had time to establish that there were two. He was to learn about that later in life – from books and further research.