In fact, she woke with a tender sensation that reminded her of the first time she had been held; the wide-shouldered prefect with the dirty laugh. But this memory soon turned to the more feral feelings she had experienced with her husband. She found herself missing him even though she knew he would be returning before evening. In his dressing room, she held his suits near her to catch his odour, looking for missing buttons, socks in need of darning—tasks which didn’t usually preoccupy her. Later, as she sweated in the sauna, she pondered her current appetites. The strong need she felt for her spouse at this moment would have seemed inconceivable to her a few years ago; yet she knew there would be other moments when the flash of a smile or the lowering of an eyelid would have her aching to touch thighs as smooth as her own, and she would be taken with the ease and swiftness of a harlot on the troll.

She had learned at a young age that no one can go against their nature. When the mind was held in abeyance—in sleep, for example—was there one sex or another?

Miranda cooled herself with cold water from the high-pressure shower, wrapped herself in a bath towel, and wandered around his dressing area, presenting herself in front of his ‘Upper Boats’ team photograph, framed and set on the military shaving stand. The youth in the front row had the same large eyes—at once both penetrating and impenetrable—that she had noticed the first time she had seen him. Where was it? Yes, at the home of that artist and his scrawny wife, close by the V&A. She’d been aware of his stare before she saw him, had felt the skin on her back goose-pimple under his charged look, but had dismissed him as altogether too small. Sizeable hands though, she’d thought. The eyes had lingered. Still, rather sombre; at ease, yet alert.

She had witnessed the same patient expression the night a yahoo on the piss had tried to touch her up—the calm eyes that watched and waited as he ducked and weaved, slipping punches, waiting the moment to uncoil a throat-closing left cross. He had taken her arm and steered her across Shaftesbury Avenue as though nothing had happened. She knew there was a demon inside him, yet she had never seen it unleashed. Miranda felt sure he must have cut quite a rug at Eton with those eyes that saw everything and judged only when it suited him.

She smiled to herself at the boyish image in front of her, and replayed in her mind the evening they met. It wasn’t until she spotted the hostess knotting and unknotting her bony legs in an effort to attract his glance that she had decided to give him a serious once-over. He must have noticed, for he approached her in the hall as she was trying to retrieve her coat. She was slightly taller than him. He had said, “Hello.” And as she turned to face him, “How’d you like to fuck a midget?”