He seemed not to care about my words, ideas or feelings. All he wanted – that evening and whenever we met subsequently – was to touch me. It was the one constant, from that first evening in the Hourglass to the last time I saw him, when I ended our affair: his physical urgency. He behaved like a starved animal that had found a raw steak and was determined to get the most out of it in case he never saw its like again. After a session in bed with him, I’d feel raided and devoured. I loved this aspect of our relationship, and told myself – because, like many women, I’m a dumb-arse who uses sex to try and get love – that Liam enacted his feelings instead of verbalising them.

Meanwhile, his emails were a joke.

‘It was good to see you yesterday. When next? L’

‘Can’t come tomorrow. Weds maybe. L’

‘Sorry, been busy all day. Yes, tonight okay. L’

I felt lucky beyond belief if I ever got an email from him that was unrelated to the arrangement-making process. Once he sent me a message saying, ‘Have you read The Sportswriter by Richard Ford?’ I hadn’t, but after hearing that Liam thought it was ‘good’, I bought and read it immediately.

He loved books; that was one thing I knew about him. He never used the word ‘love’ about them, but he carried a printed list in his trouser pocket of the books he wanted to read, divided into categories, each with its own distinct box in a formal-looking table: History, Politics, Fiction, Sociology.

One night, after we’d been seeing each other for more than a year, he mentioned his office in Rawndesley. I reminded him that he worked in Spilling. ‘That was my old job,’ he said. ‘My new one’s in Rawndesley.’ He’d switched companies three months previously, it turned out. ‘Why the hell didn’t you tell me?’ I asked him. All I’d ever known about Liam’s work was that it was something to do with applying for patents for technical products.

He looked surprised. ‘I didn’t realise I was supposed to,’ he said. There was no ‘supposed’ about it, I explained; it was simply that I’d have thought he might want to tell me, because it was news – good news. ‘I don’t regard myself as interesting, so I’m not interested in talking about myself,’ Liam replied, before reaching inside my top to grab a breast.