‘Oh, yes. Steamed capon with salsa verde – that’s pretty yummy, too. Boiled beef. Slow-cooked leg of lamb. It comes out pink, rather like pastrami. Gus misses the grease. But the achiote tofu is her mainstay: it’s horribly healthy and amazingly cheap. I mean, look at her. Doesn’t she just glow with good health?’

Is this just the sales talk of a best friend? Jomier looks down the table towards his hostess. She is talking to Rupert the art dealer. From where he sits she seems flawless. The candlelight might be from a bank of votive tapers at an altar of the Virgin. She does glow with health. She glows with beauty. She glows with an ancient Asiatic wisdom which teaches that love flourishes on a light diet of grilled tofu, seaweed and wild rice just as it drowns in a swill of fish soup, garlic mayonnaise, melted cheese, masticated lamb, ratatouille and oregano.

An impious demon, an anti-Cupid, whispers in Jomier’s ear: she has put you at the far end of the table because she looks better at a distance. She has put you between a raddled lush and a blank blancmange to make herself look better than she is. Candlelight flatters. You have never seen her in daylight! These poisoned arrows of the anti-Cupid miss their mark. They are deflected by the magnetic field that love creates around the lover. Already crystallisation is taking place. The shabbiness of Judith’s drawing room; the haut bohemian decor of her kitchen; even the achiote-marinated tofu are all as perfect as her smooth shoulders and tumbling hair.

Annabel talks to the man on her left. Marion talks to the man on her right. Jomier is free to rest his eyes on Judith. Then, before he has time to look elsewhere, she turns away from Rupert the art dealer and meets Jomier’s eye. She smiles, raises her eyebrows, tilts her head. How is it going? Annabel? Marion? The tofu? Jomier gives a amused shrug. She laughs with her eyes. The intimate wordless communication of lovers.

The evening continues. Goat’s milk panna cotta with a blackcurrant coulis. A choice of Fairtrade coffee or dandelion tea. Jomier is happy and his happiness invests a charm that he lavishes upon Annabel and Marion, and applies in a more masculine form when they go back up to the drawing room in conversation with Gus and Rupert. He is not impatient for them to leave. He has surrendered to his karma. He basks in his dulcet emotions. He has lost interest in the capsule of Viagra in the inside pocket of his corduroy jacket. Jomier is holistic. Fatalistic. What will happen will happen. What will be will be.