‘Thomas, can I ask you something?’

‘Course.’

‘Are you gay?’

I mean, really. First ball of the over. You’re supposed to talk about films and plays, and favourite ski runs. All that kind of thing.

‘No, Ronnie, I’m not gay,’ I said. ‘Are you?’

‘No.’

She stared into her mug. But I’d used tea bags, so she wasn’t going to find any answers there.

‘What’s happened to what’s his name?’ I said, lighting a cigarette.

‘Philip. He’s asleep. Or out somewhere. I don’t really know. Don’t much care, to be honest.’

‘Now, Ronnie. I think you’re just saying that.’

‘No, really. I don’t give a fuck about Philip.’

There’s always something strangely thrilling about hearing a well-spoken woman swear.

‘You’ve had a tiff,’ I said. ‘We’ve split up.’

‘You’ve had a tiff, Ronnie.’

‘Can I sleep with you tonight?’ she said.

I blinked. And then, to make sure I hadn’t just imagined it, I blinked again.

‘You want to sleep with me?’ I said.

‘Yes.’

‘You don’t just mean sleep at the same time as me, you mean in the same bed?’

‘Please.’

‘Ronnie…’

‘I’ll keep my clothes on if you like. Thomas, don’t make me say please again. It’s terribly bad for a woman’s ego.’

‘It’s terribly good for a man’s.’

‘Oh shut up.’ She hid her face in the mug. ‘I’ve gone right off you now.’

‘Ha,’ I said. ‘It worked.’

Eventually we got up and went into the bedroom.

She did keep her clothes on, as it happens. So did I, as it also happens. We lay down side by side on the bed and stared at the ceiling for a while, and when I judged the while to be long enough, I reached out a hand and took hold of one of hers. It was warm and dry and a very nice thing to touch.

‘What are you thinking?’

To be honest, I can’t remember which one of us said this first. We both said it about fifty times before dawn. ‘Nothing.’

We both said that a lot as well.

Ronnie wasn’t happy, that was the long and the short of it. I can’t say that she poured out her life story to me. It came in odd chunks, with long gaps in between, like belonging to a discount book club, but by the time the lark came on to relieve the nightingale, I’d learned quite a bit.

She was a middle child, which would probably make a lot of people go ‘ah, well there you are, you see,’ but I am too, and it’s never bothered me that much. Her father worked in the City, grinding the faces of the poor, and the two brothers either side of her looked like they were headed in the same direction. Her mother had developed a passion for deep-sea fishing when Ronnie was in her teens, and since then had spent six months of every year indulging it in distant oceans while her father took mistresses. Ronnie didn’t say where.

‘What are you thinking?’ Her, this time. ‘Nothing.’ Me.

‘Come on.’

‘I don’t know. Just… thinking.’ I stroked her hand a bit.

‘About Sarah?’

I’d sort of known she was going to ask this. Even though I’d deliberately kept my second serves deep and not mentioned Philip again, so she wouldn’t be able to come into the net.

‘Among other things. People, I mean.’ I gave her hand a tiny squeeze. ‘Let’s face it, I hardly know the woman.’

‘She likes you.’

I couldn’t help laughing.

‘That seems astronomically unlikely. The first time we met she thought I was trying to kill her father, and the last time, she spent most of the evening wanting to give me a white feather for cowardice in the face of the enemy.’

I thought it best to leave out the kissing thing, just for the moment.

‘What enemy?’ said Ronnie.

‘It’s a long story.’

‘You’ve got a nice voice.’

I turned my head on the pillow and looked at her. ‘Ronnie, in this country, when someone says something’s a long story, it’s a polite way of saying they’re not going to tell it to you.’

I woke up. Which suggested the possibility that I’d fallen asleep, but I’ve no idea when that happened. All I could think was that the building was on fire.

I leapt out of bed and ran to the kitchen, and found Ronnie burning some bacon in a frying-pan. Smoke from the cooker frolicked about in the shafts of sunlight coming through the window, and Radio 4 burbled away somewhere nearby. She’d helped herself to my only clean shirt, which annoyed me a little because I’d been saving it for something special, like my grandson’s twenty-first - but she looked good in it, so I let it pass.

‘How d’you like your bacon?’

‘Crispy,’ I lied, looking over her shoulder. Not much else I could say.

‘You can make some coffee if you like,’ she said, and turned back to the frying-pan.

‘Coffee. Right.’ I started to unscrew a jar of instant stuff, but Ronnie tutted and nodded towards the sideboard where the shopping fairy had visited in the night and left all manner of good things.

I opened the fridge and saw someone else’s life. Eggs, cheese, yoghurt, some steaks, milk, butter, two bottles of white wine. The sort of things I’ve never had in any fridge of mine in thirty-six years. I filled the kettle and switched it on. ‘You’ll have to let me pay you for all this,’ I said.

‘Oh, do grow up.’ She tried cracking an egg one-handed on the edge of the pan and made a dog’s breakfast of it. And I had no dog.

‘Shouldn’t you be at the gallery?’ I asked, as I spooned Melford’s Dark Roasted Breakfast Blend into a jug. This was all very strange.

‘I rang. Told Terry my car was broken. Brakes had failed, and I didn’t know how late I was going to be.’

I thought about this for a while.

‘But if your brakes had failed, surely you ought to have got there early?’

She laughed and slid a plate of black, white and yellow stuff in front of me. It looked unspeakable and tasted delicious.

‘Thank you, Thomas.’

We were walking throughHyde Park, going nowhere in particular, holding hands for a bit, then letting go as if holding hands wasn’t one of life’s big deals. The sun had come up to town for the day andLondon looked grand.