Ten days after Ruth’s dinner party Jomier sends Judith an email suggesting that they meet up to go to a movie. She accepts. ‘I’d love to.’ They agree on a film – French, enigmatic, thrillerish but not a thriller, starring Daniel Auteuil rather than Jean-Claude Van Damme. It is showing in Chelsea – midway between Wandsworth and Hammersmith. Jomier buys the tickets and waits for Judith in the foyer. She arrives – controlled, calm; dressed stylishly but not dressed-up; a little folksy; low-heeled shoes. She smiles. He smiles. They go in.

Jomier finds it hard to understand the film. Is it intentionally obscure? Or is he slow on the uptake? He is distracted by thoughts about her low-heeled shoes. Does she wear them because she is tall? She is no taller than Jomier but, with higher heels, would tower over smaller men. Height is an under-acknowledged factor in sexual attraction. Women like men to be taller than they are. A small man does not trigger the impulse to reproduce. There are no glandular secretions, however handsome the shrimp, unless he is a world-historical genius like Napoleon or a successful actor like Daniel Auteuil. Are the low heels to increase Judith’s chances? To reduce the height of potential lovers by two or three centimetres and so enlarge the pool? Would Judith have accepted Jomier’s invitation to go to the movies if he had been 5´4” rather than 6´1”? Would he have asked her if she had been 6´1” and he 5´4”? Does the historical conundrum posed by Pascal about the shape of Cleopatra’s nose apply to the feelings of two English divorcees sitting in a cinema on the King’s Road?

On-screen Daniel Auteuil is having sex with a beautiful girl. She murmurs. She gasps. She is acting. Can a frigid actress simulate orgasms? Or a virgin? Or must she draw on her own experience? Can the husband of an actress ever know if his wife’s response to his caresses is sincere? Or any husband? Jomier thinks back to Tilly. Was she pretending? Or was she thinking of Max?

The film ends. They come out on to the King’s Road. It is dark but still warm. People sit at tables on the pavement. They might be in Rome. Judith tells Jomier that she liked the film. Jomier is glad of her forthright opinion. He has no view about the film but, being a barrister, argues against the position she has taken, saying that the director’s intentions were obscure. Gently, tentatively, she suggests pointers in the plot that Jomier has missed.