He found clean sheets in the chest of drawers. He made the bed, got into it deliberately early. Let her come home to a dark flat. He read for a respectable fifteen minutes, then switched off the lamp. He thought it might be hard to fall asleep, but it wasn’t. He dreamed that a student came to his office and asked him what it meant, and when he asked what what meant, she said, last night, when we were together; but he had no memory of what she was suggesting, he wouldn’t have done that, why would he have done that, when she wasn’t even objectively very attractive? So he tried to tell her that it had never happened, or that it could never happen again, and to persuade her to keep it to herself, but she started crying so loudly that all his colleagues left their offices and came along the corridor to investigate. He could literally see them putting it together as they rallied around the girl, giving her their jackets to wear, putting their arms around her and making her sit on their laps, all the time glaring at David. The hostility in the room was incredible. He was sweating. He could hardly move. He was filled with a sense of absolute dread that he had completely fucked everything up, everything – Claire, the job, his whole career – for this stupid crying girl whom he didn’t even like. Even as she sat on his colleague’s bony knees, she kept reaching out to him, and there was something in her hand …

The sound of Claire scrabbling to fit her keys in the door woke him. He lay there, groggy and sour, and listened to her banging around, running the taps, getting ready for bed. She put the hall light off before she opened the bedroom door, so it wouldn’t disturb him; but she didn’t come into the room right away. She stood there, in the doorway, not looking at him exactly – it was too dark for that – but sensing him somehow, testing the tautness of the air, to tell if he was awake; if he would speak. Sometimes they reconciled like this, late at night, in the darkness, holding one another affectionately, relaxing out of their mutual tension into the weight of sleep, with only a murmured sorry or two. Not tonight. Even when she crept into bed beside him and placed a warm hand on his side, even when he felt the softness of her breasts against his back (was she wearing nothing at all for once?), he did not move. Her hand crept lower, seeking the point of his hip, the crease of his groin … What was she thinking? It was painful, bewildering, that she would choose this moment, when they were hardly speaking to each other, to initiate sex. She must be properly pissed: he could smell the hoppy fumes coming off her, because of course she had only drunk beer with Caro, not champagne. Had Caro put her up to this? Had they discussed the argument? Had Caro advised Claire to go home and shag him and make up her mind?