It was a long time later that I heard the noise of schoolchildren on their way home. Their voices, high-pitched and eager, carried up past the sedater rooms and came at last, distorted, to our House of Fame. Perhaps we were in the roof of the world, where Chaucer had been with his eagle. Perhaps the rush and press of life ended here, the voices collecting in the rafters, repeating themselves into redundancy. Energy cannot be lost only transformed; where do the words go?

‘Louise, I love you.’

Very gently, she put her hand over my mouth and shook her head. ‘Don’t say that now. Don’t say it yet. You might not mean it.’

I was protesting with a stream of superlatives, beginning to sound like an advertising hack. Naturally this model had to be the best the most important, the wonderful even the incomparable. Nouns have no worth these days unless they bank with a couple of Highstreet adjectives. The more I underlined it the hollower it sounded. Louise said nothing and eventually I shut up.

‘When I said you might not mean it, I meant it might not be possible for you to mean it.’

‘I’m not married.’

‘You think that makes you free?’

‘It makes me freer.’

‘It also makes it easier for you to change your mind. I don’t doubt that you would leave Jacqueline. But would you stay with me?’

‘I love you.’

‘You’ve loved other people but you still left them.’

‘It’s not that simple.’

‘I don’t want to be another scalp on your pole.’

‘You started this, Louise.’

‘I acknowledged it. We both started it.’

What was all this about? We had made love once. We had known each other as friends for a couple of months and yet she was challenging my suitability as a long-term candidate? I said as much.

‘So you admit that I am just a scalp?’

I was angry and bewildered. ‘Louise, I don’t know what you are. I’ve turned myself inside out to try and avoid what happened today. You affect me in ways I can’t quantify or contain. All I can measure is the effect, and the effect is that I am out of control.’

‘So you try and regain control by telling me you love me. That’s a territory you know, isn’t it? That’s romance and courtship and whirlwind.’

‘I don’t want control.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

No and you’re right not to believe me. If in doubt be sincere. That’s a pretty little trick of mine. I got up and reached for my shirt. It was under her petticoat. I picked up the petticoat instead.

‘May I have this?’

‘Trophy hunting?’

Her eyes were full of tears. I had hurt her. I regretted telling her those stories about my girlfriends. I had wanted to make her laugh and she had laughed at the time. Now I had strewn our path with barbs. She didn’t trust me. As a friend I had been amusing. As a lover I was lethal. I could see that. I wouldn’t want to have much to do with me. I knelt on the floor and clasped her legs against my chest.