Then he told them his idea, in much the same way he had told it to me.

By the time he had finished, the last of the patrons had left the restaurant and the bar had shut. They would not ask us to leave until they were locking the doors for the night. The spotlights had been turned off, and we occupied a little oasis of candlelight in the corner of the deserted room. The flickering glow made the ribs of the sculpture cast weird cage-like shadows on the wall above. We were smoking and drinking the last of our fourth bottle of red. Francis had chosen good wines, and we had relished not so much the taste of them as the fact of having them on the table. The regular sound of the broom on the flagstones of the floor next door indicated that we had about twenty minutes left.

‘We can’t do that,’ Jessica said, putting her hand up to her mouth to stifle a giggle. ‘I mean, can we? That’s crazy!’ She giggled again, and the red liquid shook in her glass. She was not used to the drink and was quite tipsy.

Lisa began to speak thoughtfully. She was staring into the candle flame.

‘I left school young. They weren’t teaching me much, and my mum needed money. So I got a job with a mate of my brother’s, running prozzies off this internet site. He couldn’t tell a database from his own arsehole, so I handled the tech. It was very classy, we did boys and girls all the way through London, Kent and up into Peterborough. I was the smile, my boss was the muscle. And these were tarts you could take out to dinner if you needed, educated escorts, that was our angle. Not too educated, obviously. We had one punter who used to get a little discount for writing reviews of the girls and some of the boys on the site. He wrote well, like a food critic. He made you want to order everything on the menu, you know what I mean? One day one of the girls belled me, and told me she had left some stuff at his place, a necklace and earrings. We never let them call the punters direct, that was a quick way to lose your commission, so she asked me how to arrange a pick-up. I looked into the guy’s details. Turned out he was a fellow at one of the colleges. I applied the next summer, and I got my place.’

Lisa delivered this little monologue impassively. Her dark almond eyes picked each of us up for a moment between the thumb and forefinger of her gaze, dangling us in front of her, challenging us to question her. At the same time her neat brown features were perfectly set and motionless, as if she had just finished reading out the side of a cornflakes packet. The occasional glimpses she allowed us of her life always appeared suddenly like this, plain and monumental, like an outcrop of rock seen through dense trees. Francis looked at her with frank admiration. I felt a part of my morality baulk at the mention of prostitution and the intimations of blackmail, but it did not hold me back. Rather it left me, as if two old ladies had risen from their seats soon after the opening credits, and with grumbling protest left the rest of the audience to enjoy a lubricious movie.