She shifts underneath him and runs her fingers over his back, in between his buttocks, delving. His hardness returns. She licks the tips of two fingers and slides her hand down. Gravely, he opens her legs. He is hard inside her, back on the pitch, no longer watching but playing. Soon he is kicking the ball into the sky, into the sun, her mouth against his ear: ‘Now.’ He kisses her shoulder, her lips. He holds her in his arms and falls abruptly asleep to the sound of bells and trains. In his history lesson, Ma Burgeon has finished telling Vasily about the first victim of the railway, the MP William Huskisson, run over in 1830 by Stephenson’s steam engine.

Dyer woke to see Katya getting up from the bed. She walked on tiptoe like a ballerina, straight-backed. He listened to the tread of her bare feet down the stairs, and raised himself on one elbow.

Her underwear on the floor. A thin white slip, the colour of mist. Swallowing every light in the room.

His head feels strange, as though he’s slept for some time, even though his watch says it’s only three o’clock. He falls back to sleep for a bit.

Downstairs, the sound of flushing. When she reappears, she is wearing Marvar’s coat like a dressing gown, with her arms thrust into its pockets.

‘You have taken off phone,’ she observes.

‘Someone kept ringing and hanging up,’ he says.

‘What if it is Marvar?’ she asks.

He looks at her. Her white breasts, marked in red blushes where his tongue and teeth have travelled, stand out against the green silk lining.

‘You know that’s his coat?’ he says after a while.

‘I know, I recognise,’ looking down. Framed by the camel-haired lapels, her collar bones are quotation marks.

‘He left it behind.’

‘Maybe he wants it back.’ Her eyes are misleadingly calm and clear.

‘I wish.’

‘You were friend of his?’

‘Not really.’

She removes her hands from the pockets and sits down at the end of the bed. ‘I saw you speaking to him,’ caressing his ankle through the sheet.

‘When was that?’ He was weighing her motive.

The grey in her eyes looked darker, the same shade as her bruise, full of hidden flashing thoughts.

‘That night. By the sandpit. Remember?’

‘Oh, yes. We were discussing Vasily.’ He said it quite decisively.

A frown screwed up her face. She turned and looked at him sharply.

‘Marvar was working on fusion, no?’

He felt himself tilting. ‘So I gather. I don’t know much about fusion. Do you know about fusion?’

She was silent, tense; it was as if they had stepped together into a cave.

‘It was my father’s subject.’ She made a dispersing gesture with her hand. ‘It is said he was doing good work,’ something rounding the earlier hard edges of her voice.

‘Your father?’

‘Rustum Marvar,’ slightly huffed.

‘Who told you that?’