Gradually, the conversation moved on. She told him about teaching. He told her about his fascination with documentary-making. How he’d hawked himself around production companies, willing to work for nothing, until he’d begun to get regular gigs. His big break had come the previous year with a programme about young Irish people in London. She’d seen it, she said. It was good, really good. He thanked her and touched her arm again. A dart of excitement shot through her. She went to the bar and got another round because, let’s face it, doing anything else would be stingy, and nobody wanted to be seen as stingy. She could have bought a 7 Up for herself but didn’t. By now her thoughts were blurring at the edges. The bar gleamed in the late-afternoon sun. Everything felt dream-like. They had one for the road, and she made the mistake of looking at her watch. It wasn’t late afternoon at all. It was seven thirty in the evening.

‘Oh, hell,’ said Nina, ‘I’d better go.’ She didn’t have to add, ‘Or my boyfriend will be sending out a search party.’

‘Will I see you again?’ he said.

And that was how it began.

Two days later, they went to his Ranelagh flat. They met twice the following week and three times the week after that. Nina felt a thrill as sweet as it was wrong. She was dizzy with sex and conversation and subterfuge. In the same way that all the best parties took place on Good Friday, it seemed that illicit sex was far more thrilling than the regular variety.

Obviously, their arrangement couldn’t last. Julian was meant to be viewing the Father Galvin tapes; she was still on holidays. When he resumed filming, when she had to return to work, who knew what would happen?

Sometimes they went for coffee or a drink. She convinced herself that if they stuck to certain parts of the city, nobody would see them. They spoke about their ambitions. Julian wanted to make serious documentaries with international appeal, the sort of productions that got shown at film festivals and in art-house cinemas. If, in the meantime, he had to turn his hand to the occasional corporate video, so be it. ‘I have no time for failure,’ he said, and while Nina knew this would make some people gag, she found it refreshing. She didn’t think she’d ever met somebody so sorted, so together.