Annie arrives late. She apologises. She has been having a drink with some friends. She sits down opposite Jomier and smiles. She appears uninterested in her surroundings; accepts his suggestion of a champagne cocktail; and makes a perfunctory choice from the menu. She is in a mood he has not encountered before: soft and woozy, perhaps a little drunk. Her eyes look into his and, every now and then, she raises her hand to fiddle with her thick blonde hair. She wears a skirt and a top. A simple string of polished onyx hangs around her neck. The scene is set. Champagne cocktails. White tablecloth. Silver cutlery. Polished wine glasses. Mâcon-Villages. Brouilly. Annie drinks what is poured into her glass but eats little. Most of the artichauts à la barigoule and the skate with brown shrimp and capers are left on her plate. Jomier, on the other hand, empties his bowl of soupe de poisson, rouille, Gruyère et croutons, and eats all of his Elwy Valley rump of lamb, ratatouille and oregano. His head begins to ache: he regrets the champagne cocktail. She chats. He listens. Her father – as bad as ever. Her stepmother – demented. Her mother – trying to do the right thing. Her brother – out of rehab and a regular at AA. She talks about her friends. One of the boys she met earlier in the evening had said he knew Jomier. Jeremy Darton? Jomier remembers. He is the son of a cousin of Tilly’s. ‘And what did he think about your date with a friend of his parents?’

She shrugs, smiles, plumps up her hair. ‘I didn’t ask him.’

‘What would he have thought?’

She shrugs again. ‘Who cares?’

Annie tells Jomier about her former boyfriends and sundry male admirers – la ronde de l’amour. She had an affair with A at ‘college’ and only later, when she’d had other boyfriends, did she realise that he had a crooked penis. ‘It bent sideways. No wonder it wasn’t much fun.’ She had an affair with B who was married and made out that he would leave his wife but it became quite clear after a while that he was really quite happily married so she dumped him. She slept with C to cheer him up after his girlfriend had dumped him. Everyone at work thought she’d had an affair with D, her boss, because they often went out to lunch together but she didn’t fancy him and anyway he was married. E, F, G – but Annie does not use letters of the alphabet to disguise the identity of her former lovers. She gives their names – Molly’s brother Dan, Johnny Gray, Simon Tapley, Toby Pierson. There hasn’t been anyone since Toby. ‘I haven’t had sex for ages.’