‘We have a kind of don’t ask and don’t tell policy,’ he beamed, raising his eyebrows.

‘I guess it’s her who doesn’t ask and you who doesn’t tell,’ Bess said, speaking her thoughts aloud.

‘I guess.’ Mr Maxwell sat up and leant against the headboard, as if a little chastised, her awkwardness contagious. ‘Why don’t you come and sit down?’ He patted the space on the bed next to him and Bess tried to imagine what she might look like, standing there with her bag over her shoulder, holding her cup of water with a shred of cabbage in it. It was hardly Fifty Shades . . . She didn’t feel sexy or willing, just embarrassed and again unsure of how she could leave without causing a scene or incurring the ire of the man she had seen shouting up at his wife from the lawn a few years ago now: You’re a fucking joke, Helen! A fucking joke!

She sat, but not next to him, preferring to take a spot on the edge of the bed with both her feet resting on the floor, her toes pointing towards the door and her back to him, like an awkward encounter on a hospital visit when they had run out of chairs. A half-hearted seat, really, neither engaged nor distant, keeping her options open.

‘I didn’t really plan to come here, Andrew,’ she said, glancing briefly at him over her shoulder.

‘So you’re here by accident? You stumbled into the wrong building and then the wrong lift and then pressed the wrong button?’ He laughed – that laugh . . . and she felt stupid.

‘Not exactly. I was having lunch, and then I got in my little car.’ She chose not to mention her parents, not wanting to bring them into this.

‘Which, I hope you don’t mind me mentioning, is losing quite a lot of oil. I noticed it the other day when you were parked in the road – might want to get that looked at, not to mention the stain it leaves on the tarmac.’

‘Oh yes, I will. Thank you.’ She again briefly met his gaze. ‘Anyway, I was going to head home and went on autopilot and—’

‘I have to be honest, Bess,’ he interrupted, ‘but I don’t think that would hold up in a court of law: “Please, yer ’onour, I never meant to drive five miles out of me way and get in a lift and knock on a door.”’

It sounded like he was impersonating her and she didn’t like it one bit.

‘Are you being funny?’ she asked directly.