Again, she shook her head. More than a little contemptuous. Impatient.

After a moment, he said: ‘I had a family, a sick wife. Tell me, what would you do in the circumstances?’

‘I calculated that, because you were fond of me, you would say nothing.’

The featureless bedroom, the rumpled bed, Laure’s anguish, the harsh and unpalatable truths that were being aired… he knew he would never forget this encounter.

What if he took her by the arm and pulled her down onto the bed to take his fill of the pearly skin, of the tumble of hair, the sweep from shoulder to hip? He would murmur her name and tell her that all would be well between them and there would be peace, and ideology would lie down with ideology. He would tell her that he loved her and had done so for a long time and carrying that love through his life had scraped him raw and, yet, had been his greatest delight. It had been, he would add, a contorted, tainted love but, in its strange way, a true one.

Was it her grief or, because of her own, a heightened sensitivity to Petr’s distress? Perhaps she prided herself on being someone who kept to their bargain? Laure turned to Petr and put her arms around his neck.

His surprise was intense, but he kissed her. She tasted of olives and the recent cigarette. He drew her down and moved his body so it lay against hers. Running his hand up from her thigh, he traced the waist and the softness of a breast collapsed against her torso.

As so often, the reality was different to the imagined one of surrender and hungry encounter. Laure tensed as he ran his hand up and down her body and stroked a nipple. ‘Shall I stop?’

‘No.’

It was cool enough in the room to cause her skin to gooseflesh and tiny fine hairs on her arms stood upright. He felt behind him for a sheet to draw over them but only succeeded in getting his hand tangled up in its folds. He fought free and tried to touch her between her legs. She moved away from under him.

‘Let’s not draw it out,’ she said.

Halfway through, he opened his eyes. Laure looked contained, slightly indifferent, almost maternal. Nothing like the passionate, responsive woman that he had wished for. But this was the best he was going to get. He closed his eyes and allowed the hot, hard impulses to take him over.

Towards the end, she reached up, drew his face to hers and kissed him. For a few moments, that was good enough – until he realized that she was kissing a memory.

Getting dressed, he examined his face in the bathroom mirror and noted it was wiped clean of anything much. He brushed back his hair and knotted the French tie and stepped into the sitting room.