In the morning, as he eats his breakfast, the exasperation at his own folly persists. Here before him are the elements of perfect happiness – the morning newspaper, a cup of coffee, a slice of toast, an empty day – nothing to do but transcribe the past from his handwritten notebooks and enter the present into his digital journal – his blog. His toilette out of the way – shaving, defecating, vitamin pills, making his bed and taking a short walk around the block – Jomier goes to his desk, switches on his computer and loads Microsoft Word. He opens the document ‘Journal – current’. He writes an account of what he did yesterday – Ruth’s dinner party, Judith, the kipper pâté. He then opens the document ‘Journals 1950–1970’ and searches for ‘Judith’ but the search item is not found. He tries ‘Lucy’ and up comes Lucy Harding, the neighbours’ daughter. It is 1958. He reads and remembers. A teenage party. The Harding parents away. Dancing to music from a gramophone – the early days of LPs. The lights go out. Couples sidle to sofas or fall on the carpeted floor. Kissing. Fumbling. Heavy-petting. Lucy leads him into her father’s study – his den. They tumble onto the leather sofa. He slides his hand down the front of her dress and, with the index finger of his right hand, fiddles with a nipple. ‘A crystallised cherry on a plate of junket.’ That dates it. No one eats junket now.

Jomier scrolls down with the wheel on his mouse. Another party where he manages to put two fingers beneath the elastic of Lucy’s knickers and feel moist, squidgy, bristly flesh. They go no further: he is still only sixteen, Lucy fifteen, and other couples are necking and petting in the same room. The holidays end. Jomier and Lucy go back to school and, when Jomier presses ‘Find Next’, the cursor leaps forward six years to ‘The Hardings come to lunch. Lucy brings a friend.’ Some months later: ‘Get the address of Lucy’s friend’; then ‘Back from Greece. Write to Lucy’s friend’; then finally, her name. ‘Jydith engaged to Beresford Grant. Tear up the letter.’

Jomier corrects the spelling of the name of Judith, searches again for ‘Jydith’ to see if the same typo occurs elsewhere and, after a search lasting a microsecond, is informed that the item was not found. He reads on. He seems to have been unaffected by the engagement to Beresford Grant of Jydith-Judith. There are more fish in the sea than ever came out of it. Is that the expression? Jomier has a careless memory – for sayings, proverbs, lyrics, hymns. It had irritated Tilly. Other fish. More crystallised cherries on junket, on jelly, on blancmange. Jomier is both the participant and detached observer. ‘C. When she is sexually excited she puffs like a pair of bellows.’ Who was C.? Catherine? Or Clare? The Clare who had turned down Marco? ‘A foreigner. And almost certainly queer.’