Jomier is attracted to Judith. Her breezy ‘fallen woman’ line does not irritate him; he does not react adversely, as he usually does, to this woman of ‘a certain age’, though the neckline of her dress shows that her breasts, while still smooth and soft, no longer run on in a continuous curve from her breastbone but have sunk in their foundations. The eyeshadow, the artificial curls of her tinted hair – all the artifices of the post-menopausal woman – do not trigger the usual indifference. It is as if Jomier has removed his varifocal rimless glasses and sees Judith through an astigmatic haze that softens the image, airbrushing away the wrinkles around her eyes and mouth, the small bleb on her lower lip. Using the tools of an inner Adobe Photoshop, the memory of the twenty-year-old Judith is superimposed upon the reality of the same woman forty years on. Jomier is thinking: this woman is intelligent, amusing, sincere. If she had married me instead of Beresford . . . If I had married her instead of Tilly . . .

And might it be possible, all these years later, Jomier asks himself, to pick up where we left off?

‘Perhaps we should pick up where we left off,’ Jomier says to Judith. By now they have done with the chicken fricassee and are eating rhubarb fool.

Judith smiles – a nice, friendly, youthful smile. ‘You mean . . .’

‘I’ll rewrite the letter and ask you out.’

‘Or an email?’

‘What is the address?’ Jomier is about to reach for the small notebook and ballpoint pen in the inner pocket of his jacket but suddenly feels the same awkwardness that he had felt forty years before. He does not want to be seen writing down Judith’s email address by the other guests.

‘[email protected].’

Jomier repeats what she has said. ‘I’ll remember it.’

Judith looks at him sceptically. She has understood. Again Jomier fails to feel the irritation he habitually feels when a woman reads his thoughts. ‘If you forget, you can always ask Ruth.’

‘Of course.’

‘Unless . . .’

‘What?’

‘You might be embarrassed as you were with Lucy?’

‘At my age?’ Jomier gives an unconvincing laugh.

‘I’ll give you my card before we go.’

‘Your card?’

‘A business card.’

‘You have a business?’

‘I teach yoga.’