Off the court, Jomier did better: he was a trained advocate and felt he had as good a mind and a wider experience of life than the focused, driven Max. The focused can be blinkered: the driven look neither to left nor right. Jomier enjoyed arguing, and Max could never get the better of him in an argument about this or that; but sometimes, when Jomier’s polemic was at its peak and victory seemed certain, Max would turn to Tilly, saying: ‘What do you think?’ Max knew quite well that Tilly had no opinion at all on the Israeli incursions into Southern Lebanon or the kidnapping of Aldo Moro; but by putting the question to Tilly he managed to suggest that the British habit of excluding women from discussions on serious matters was at best backward, at worst impolite. Jomier was denied his triumph. Game, set and match to Max.

Or did Max put the question to flatter Tilly? Was she already in his sights? Was his Cary Grant charm a form of flirtation? Had he been coming on to Tilly from the start? It had not occurred to Jomier that Tilly might be attracted to Max because he was not attracted to Jane. While Max and Tilly had giggled in a cloud of pheromones on the facing banquette in a restaurant – or at a Cycladic beach bar, or the loggia of an Italian villa – Jomier and Jane had remained antiseptically friendly and polite. Jane exuded no pheromones when he was with her. Or, he now suspected, when she was with anyone else. Was it a gene she had inherited from Puritan ancestors, or another unresolved complex from her childhood? She was neat and dry with skinny legs and puny breasts. Clearly, she had had sex with Max, but did she enjoy it? Too messy? Too untidy? Too uncontrolled? She would never have admitted, even to herself, that she did not like sex – a heresy since the 1960s – and no doubt there were mini orgasms, little hiccups, little yelps – well down on the Richter scale from Tilly’s cries and groans and seismic buckling.