The showering, he’d noticed, had improved since Caro arrived. Every time Claire set off for one of those lunches, her hair was fluffy, freshly washed. Her nails were trimmed. He ought to have been glad of this: he was always hoping she would spruce herself up. But then he would watch her choose one of those mannish shirts she had started buying, white twill or grey denim, watch her button it up to the neck, and feel uneasy. It wasn’t even that Claire was copying Caro’s style, with her fake fur and her blue tights, but rather that Claire was dressing how she imagined Caro might want her to: complementing rather than competing. Was there something flirtatious in it? Not that he thought Claire and Caro were sleeping together – but he wondered if Claire had thought about it. Caro would have. Why not? Here she was, hundreds of miles from home, the new face in her department, single, and by her own admission ‘sexually rapacious’. Who else was she going to audition? To seduce? Claire was beautiful to David, an Augustan plaster cameo – dark hair against a pale, high forehead; delicate eyebrows with a distinctive semicircular shape; deep-set eyes; the strong, steep slope of her nose – but she could also be beautiful to others, if she let it show. Was that what she thought she was doing?

When they had first compared their sexual histories, David had told Claire, truthfully, that he’d slept with a grand total of six girls, and she had said, ‘Me too,’ and in his relief he’d made an awkward joke about not knowing that Claire liked girls. He often remembered that moment: his foolish acceptance of the matching number, but also the joke. Had he hit on the truth by accident? Was Claire really interested in women? She had never expressed any curiosity to him; and here she was, living with a man, calling herself his girlfriend. He had to respect the identity she chose to assert. Who wants to be the idiot who decides his lover is gay just because she doesn’t want to sleep with him any more? But even with all the respecting he had done, even with all the work, their sex life was still a disaster. He believed, profoundly believed, that she was just as frustrated as him, but didn’t know it. What else might she not know about herself?

He opened the notebook at random and started to read.