Only Jessica threatened the satisfaction of a decent farewell. On the last full day of term, she came to see me, and sat smoking by the window of my room in the armchair. The summer suited her; her fair skin was dusted with a light tan. It brought out the brilliance of her eyes, which glittered like sunshine on deep water. She drew up her knees to her chest and leant with her head propped on her elbow, looking out into the warm day. She had on a shirt of white diaphanous material tied off at the midriff that kept threatening to disclose one of her small nipples, and torn blue jeans. She was wearing baby-pink lip salve that coloured the filter of her cigarette. This was the look I associated with her, an outfit just on the edge of indecency, so that no one could quite pin down a specific transgression for which to upbraid her, try as they might. I never fully shared the delight she took in antagonizing the moral majority, a group, I thought, that existed more in her imagination than in the real world. I busied myself with packing, fearful that if I looked at her I would not be able to find the appropriate response to her beauty. Since the night in the hotel I had forfeited my camouflage of disinterest, but I could not let her know how distracting I found her presence. The college authorities had informed me that I could keep the same room next year, but the whole building was to be invaded by American high school students over the summer, and anything personal or precious had to be removed. She had ostensibly come to help me sort out my things, but tended to regard her mere presence as ample help in any enterprise.

‘You’re not packing up your easel?’ she asked.

‘To be honest, I’ve had enough of the thing for the moment.’

‘I know what you mean.’

I was folding my clothes. A pall of silence had descended over the events of the night of the deal. I did not know how I had expected things to change, but that they would change I had felt certain. Nothing had prepared me for the atmosphere that had unfolded in the aftermath, an abject refusal to discuss things, a bland sheen of scar tissue that had grown over the incident, leaving the bullet still in the flesh. In the days immediately following our return to Cambridge I had been able to ascribe our listlessness to a prolonged comedown, and by the time I was forced to admit that something more fundamental was responsible the moment for addressing it had passed. I had been used to talking about anything with them, things I had never spoken of before, and I was sad to think that we had formed our own taboo.

‘What are you planning over the holidays?’ I asked her to staunch the flow of silence.

‘I thought I might go on an Italian course in Florence. I’ve always wanted to learn Italian. I’ve got the clothes and the gestures, I just need the language.’ She twirled her free hand in the air as if summoning a waiter across a crowded piazza, and shouted, ‘Ma che cosa fai?!’