What will Annie think he is up to? A slow detumescence. Then, like the points change on a railway line, the track suddenly opens to the bladder. Jomier pees. He empties his bladder, or as much of it as his enlarged prostate gland will allow. He zips up his flies, leaves the cubicle, washes his hands and returns to fetch Annie who sits facing away from him at their table. He lays his hand on her shoulder. ‘Shall we go?’ She turns and smiles. They go out into the street.

The cooler air does nothing to cure Jomier of his headache or dyspepsia. He now longs for only one thing: to go home and catch the tail end of Newsnight. They reach his Golf. Jomier presses the button on his key fob. The doors are unlocked. Annie turns towards him. The orange light from the street lamps makes her face look like a child’s made up for Halloween. ‘Shall we go clubbing?’

‘I don’t think I feel up to it.’

Annie laughs. ‘I wasn’t serious. Can you take me back to Barons Court?’

‘Of course.’

They get into the car. Jomier starts the engine.

Annie: ‘Molly’s gone to stay with her parents.’

They drive west along the Bayswater Road. Jomier tries to plan a route to Barons Court in his befuddled mind. Like a tired nag, he longs to head home but, under Annie’s direction, turns south on Kensington Church Street. The usual aroma of upholstery and windscreen wash has been replaced by the fragrance of Annie – scent, soap, a kind of musk. In Jomier’s brain there is confusion. Contradictory messages are coming in from both body and mind. One voice tells him that he has got lucky: in a quarter of an hour he will be making love with a beautiful girl. Another asks if he knows what he is doing. Is he really going to have sex with a girl half his age? Is he going to add his name to the list of her lovers? Follow where so many have been before? Be drawn helpless by the gravity of desire into the black hole between her pretty legs? Dodge the asteroids of herpes, pubic lice and genital warts to plunge into a moist potpourri of E. coli, chlamydia, thrush, gonorrhoea and whatever else has been left behind after previous landings by Dan, Johnny, Simon, Toby et al.?