‘Stupid? Not at all, Moira. That is the very last thing you should feel. You have to remember, sweetheart,’ Lucas added in a jokey American accent – anything to divert the girl from what looked like the imminent possibility of tears – ‘I’m a medievalist! My sole speciality is picking apart what people wrote eight or nine hundred years ago – dragons, knights, damsels, mystics, the codes of courtly love – for that, I’m your man.’

Moira seemed frozen in some sort of agony of defeat. She dropped her moist-eyed gaze to the carpet, as if a solution might lie in its faded swirls. ‘Come on, now,’ Lucas chivvied kindly, while Esther niggled at the back of his mind again. Stupid had been one of her favourite weaponised words, slung out during the course of complaints that were supposedly about Cambridge, but which always ended up being about him and how he made her feel. Lucas had no idea, she would accuse bitterly, what it felt like to be looked down on, day in, day out, for having no stellar academic credentials, and no career to speak of, other than lowbrow freelance editing jobs cobbled together round motherhood. Lucas would assure her that she was clever – and mad – because he had never encountered anyone, himself included, who did not recognise and appreciate her intelligence. But telling Esther was never enough. Nothing for Esther had ever been enough.

‘Okay, Moira, leave it with me, and I’ll take a quick look—’

‘Ohmygod, Professor Shaw, thank you so much.’

‘I’ve no idea when…’ The purple folder was already being pressed into his hands. ‘And only because you asked so nicely,’ Lucas went on, already wishing he could retract the offer. ‘So, no spreading of the word, you hear? I can’t have the thousands of would-be Ben Lerners and Sally Rooneys imagining they can knock on my door for literary guidance which I am in no position to offer…’ The regret was thickening. She hadn’t cried. She had been almost out of the door. He could already hear Heidi gasp, calling him a soft touch. ‘But promise me you’ll find a writing group to join, okay?’

‘Yep. Sure. Thanks, Professor. And I won’t say anything.’

‘You better not,’ Lucas quipped, a little wearily, dropping the purple folder onto his to-do pile. He would do it soon, he vowed, as the thump of footsteps receded down the staircase; maybe even that afternoon. Twenty minutes max, and then the folder could be slid into her pigeonhole with a couple of lines of encouragement. The trick, as with all chores, was not to make a meal of it.

Back behind his desk, he put on the Brandenburgs, which worked their soothing magic as always. The symbolism paper began to flow a little. So much so that after an hour he succumbed to the reward of calling his girlfriend.