Was that Saturday the beginning of the end? Was it then that private thoughts about the alpha male who has no thought for the morrow because the morrow was secure in offshore trust funds first triggered a tingling in Tilly’s private parts? Jomier ponders the complex interaction between the mind and the genitalia. Men are indelicate; there is no hiding the erections brought on by erotic images or sexual fantasies. Women are delicate and censor from polite discourse any mention of what takes place under their skirts – turgescence, tumescence, engorgement, secretions. ‘We may perhaps say that the erotic personality rests on a triangular association between the cerebrum, the endocrine system and the autonomic nervous apparatus.’ Havelock Ellis. The thought of munificent Max in the brain sends messages to Tilly’s reproductive apparatus hidden slyly within her body – not an open, honest appendage like the male phallus but a sly octopus lurking behind the pubic lichen-fringed rock of her mons Veneris that emerges from the shadows not just to entangle Max but en passant to reach out with a spare tentacle and take hold of Jomier’s pension. When they divorced, Tilly’s claim to half of his pension fund was upheld by the Family Court.

Jomier reconciles his bank statements. Income and expenditure are in balance. Jomier makes ends meet. The death of Jomier’s parents came after his divorce. The care they had required in their old age had been covered by the Civil Service pension. After his mother’s death, the flat in Holland Park had been sold and the proceeds, less inheritance tax and lawyers’ fees, distributed to her heir, Jomier. All turned out as Tilly had predicted. Now the balance depleted by standing orders is replenished by dividends from Jomier’s investments; and the annuities, bought from financial institutions with names that once anchored them in the British Isles – Scottish Widows, Norwich Union, Yorkshire Insurance – are paid into his account by anonymous globalised entities with names like those of newly discovered planets – Aegon, Axa, Aviva. What would happen, Jomier wonders, if like burned-out stars they became invisible through the telescope of his computer? Did not the twinkling Enron suddenly turn into a black hole?