His body too sends signals that all is not well. The dyspepsia has turned to a mild nausea and his bowels have chimed in with a demand to void the fish soup. Jomier argues with his bowels: the fish soup is not due in the lower colon for two or three days. His bowels counter that something in the fish soup has arrived through his bloodstream and now wants out. As they drive down the North End Road Jomier mediates on the three-way squabble going on in his brain between the semen that wants out through his penis, the gas and excreta determined to leave through his anus, and the bile that threatens to exit through his mouth.

Jomier laughs.

‘Why are you laughing?’

‘Because life is a farce.’

‘Why is life a farce?’

‘Because I want to make love to you but I can’t.’

Annie sits up, turns towards him, frowns. ‘Why not?’

‘I feel sick.’ Jomier’s eyes are on the road. He cannot see the expression on her face as she reconfigures her emotions.

‘Do you really feel sick?’

‘Yes, I really feel sick. It’s the fish soup.’

Jomier stops the Golf at a red light.

‘Turn left,’ says Annie.

Jomier turns left.

‘There, up on the right, by the pillar box.’

Jomier docks the Golf by the kerb.

‘Do you want to come in?’ she asks.

‘To vomit?’

‘Why not?’

Jomier shakes his head. ‘I’d better go home.’

Annie leans forward and embraces him. ‘You poor dear.’ She opens the door. ‘Will you call me?’

‘Of course.’

‘It was a lovely evening.’

‘It was a mistake.’

‘What?’ She looks anxious.

‘The fish soup.’

‘You learn,’ she says.

‘Learn what?’

‘Not to eat too much before . . . well, you know.’ She opens the door.

‘You’re right,’ says Jomier. ‘I’ll know next time.’ Si vieillesse savait. He leans forward. They embrace again but don’t kiss. She gets out. The door closes. He waits until she disappears through the door to her flat.

Jomier drives back to Hammersmith. The nausea is lifting but his gut remains taut. He opens his front door, disarms the burglar alarm and goes to his downstairs lavatory. He lets down his trousers. The cool wood of the lavatory seat caresses his buttocks. He relaxes the clenched muscles around his sphincter. Ecstasy – not perhaps the kind he had envisaged at the start of the evening but ecstasy all the same. Jomier has learned his lesson. Avoid fish soup on a date and, when it comes to the competing demands of the body, excrement takes precedence over semen. Shit trumps spunk.