I leaned over and kissed her on both cheeks. ‘Thanks again. I hope I see you around. If you were serious before about inviting me round for dinner sometime, I’d love to come.’

She looked at me curiously, as if I had nearly tricked her into something unpleasant. She frowned. ‘Andrew is always encouraging me to invite friends round. I suppose he might like you once he’d got over his disappointment that I’d invited a man and not a woman.’

‘I could bring a woman, if you liked.’

‘You bragger. No, thanks.’

‘Just a bottle of wine, then.’

‘And a half-bottle of whisky for the doorstep.’

‘I’d turn up sober, I promise.’

‘Best not promise. You never know when literature will need you again. Goodbye, Paul.’

‘Bye, Emily.’

She shut the door. I stood there for a few seconds and listened for her footsteps on the other side. After about ten seconds I heard her going back up the stairs and I turned away too.

‌

‌Three

The bookshop where I work is in Bloomsbury, surrounded by universities and libraries and the British Museum. My colleagues here come from a separate planet from my colleagues at White Jesus, being, in the main, graceful, thoughtful people, well read in political philosophy, current affairs, poetry and literary fiction.

‘Have you heard about Leo?’ asked Helen, as soon as I walked through the door. Helen is the shop’s manager, a woman my age from Hull. ‘A hundred K,’ she said, which is not the kind of thing she usually said, and I wished I were not aware of the context, that my least favourite colleague Leo had been talking to publishers about the novel he had written.

‘K?’ I said.

‘A hundred thousand pounds.’

‘That’s a lot of M,’ I said.

‘I know.’

‘Is he going to resign?’

‘I didn’t think of that. Would you resign?’

‘No. Or I’d spend half of it in six months and half of it on subsequent rehab.’

‘Thank God for you, Paul. I can rely on you not to go anywhere.’

‘Particularly if you give me a pay rise.’

‘Ah, Paul.’

‘Have you spoken to him?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Is he unbearable?’

‘A little bit.’

‘You’re less bitter than me. That means he’s totally unbearable.’

‘I’ll leave you to judge it. How was Emily Nardini?’

I breathed out. ‘If you say something stupid to her—’

‘Which you did.’

‘Which I did – she looks just like her photo. But on perhaps as many as two separate occasions I actually made her laugh. Then she looks different.’

‘You haven’t fallen for her, have you? You look like you have.’

‘I fall in love with everyone I meet. For a little bit.’

‘You’re like George Eliot. She used to fall in love with everyone she met.’

‘I’m glad someone’s finally noticed. That’s why I hit it off so well with Emily Nardini.’