This didn’t seem to satisfy him much. There was no reason why it should have done, of course, but what else could I say? He cleared his throat, slowly and deliberately, as if he might not get the chance to do it again for some time.

‘What precisely is your relationship with Sarah Woolf?’

I was really thrown now. Couldn’t make head or tail of this. So I watched while Solomon walked slowly backwards and forwards, pursing his lips and frowning at the floor, like someone trying to broach the subject of masturbation with his teenage son. Not that I’ve ever been present at such a session, but I imagine that it involves a lot of blushing and fidgeting, and the discovery of microscopic specks of dust on sleeves of jackets that suddenly require a huge amount of attention.

‘Why are you asking me, David?’

‘Please, master. just…’This was not Solomon’s best day, I could tell. He took a deep breath. ‘Just answer. Please.’

I watched him for a while, feeling angry with him and sorry for him in just about equal parts.

"‘For old times’ sake," were you about to say?’

‘For the sake of anything,’ he said, ‘that will make you answer the question, master. Old times, new times, just tell me.’

I lit another cigarette and looked at my hands, trying, as I’d tried many times before, to answer the question for myself, before I answered it for him.

Sarah Woolf. Grey eyes, with a streak of green. Nice tendons. Yes, I remember her.

What did I really feel? Love? Well, I couldn’t answer that, could I? Just not familiar enough with the condition to be able to pin it on myself like that. Love is a word. A sound. Its association with a particular feeling is arbitrary, unmeasurable, and ultimately meaningless. No, I’ll have to come back to that one, if you don’t mind.

What about pity? I pity Sarah Woolf because… because what? She lost her brother, then her father, and now she’s locked in the dark tower while Childe Roland fumbles about with a collapsible step-ladder. I could pity her for that, I suppose; for the fact that she gets me as a rescuer.

Friendship? For God’s sake, I hardly know the woman. Well what was it, then?

‘I’m in love with her,’ I heard someone say, and then realised it was me.

Solomon closed his eyes for a second, as if that was the wrong answer, again - then moved slowly, reluctantly, to a table by the wall, where he picked up a small plastic box. He weighed it in his hand for a moment, as if contemplating whether to give it to me or hurl it out of the door into the snow; and then he started rummaging in his pocket. Whatever he was looking for was in the last pocket he tried, and I was just thinking how nice it was to see this happening to someone else for a change, when he produced a pencil torch. He gave me the torch and the box, then turned his back and drifted away, leaving me to get on with it.

Well, I opened the box. Of course I did. That’s what you do with closed boxes that people give you. You open them. So I lifted the yellow plastic lid, actually and metaphorically, and straight away my heart sank a little lower still.

The box contained slide photographs, and I knew, absolutely knew, that I wasn’t going to like whatever was in them.

I plucked out the first one, and held it up in front of the torch.

Sarah Woolf. No mistake there.

A sunny day, a black dress, getting out of aLondon taxi.

Good. Fair enough. Nothing wrong with that. She was smiling - a big, happy smile - but that’s allowed. That’s okay. I didn’t expect her to be sobbing into her pillow twenty-four hours a day. So. Next.

Paying the driver. Again, nothing wrong with that. You ride in a cab, you have to pay the driver. This is life. The photograph was taken with a long lens, at least a 135, probably more. And the closeness of the sequence meant a motor-drive. Why would anyone bother to take…

Moving away from the cab towards the kerb, now. Laughing. The cab driver’s watching her bottom, which I would do if I was a cab driver. She’d watched the back of his neck, he was watching her bottom. A fair exchange. Well not quite fair, perhaps, but no one ever said it was a perfect world.

I glanced up at Solomon’s back. His head was bowed. And the next one, please.

A man’s arm. Arm and shoulder, in fact, in a dark-grey suit. Reaching out for her waist, while she tilts her head back, ready for a kiss. The smile is bigger still. Again, who’s worrying? We’re not puritans. A woman can go out for lunch with somebody, can be polite, pleased to see him - doesn’t mean we have to call the police, for fuck’s sake.

Arms round each other now. Her head is camera-side, so his face is obscured, but they’re definitely hugging. A proper, full-on hug. So he’s probably not her bank manager. So what?

This one’s almost the same, but they’ve started to turn. His head lifting away from her neck.

They’re coming towards us now, arms still round each other. Can’t see his face, because a passer-by is passing-by, close to the camera, blurred. But her face. Her face is what? Heaven? Bliss? Joy? Rapture? Or just politeness. Next and final slide.

Oh, hello, I thought to myself. This is the one. ‘Oh, hello,’ I said aloud. ‘This is the one.’ Solomon didn’t turn.

A man and a woman are coming towards us, and I know them both. I’ve just owned up to being in love with the woman, although I’m not really sure if that’s true, and I’m getting less sure by the second, while the man… yeah, right.

He’s tall. He’s good-looking, in a weathered kind of a way. He’s dressed in an expensive suit. And he’s smiling too. They’re both smiling. Smiling on a big scale. Smiling so hard, it looks like the tops of their heads are about to fall off.

Of course I’d like to know what the fuck the two of them are so happy about. If it’s a joke, I’d like to hear it - judge for myself whether it’s worth rupturing your pancreas over, whether it’s the kind of joke that would make you want to take hold of the person next to you and squeeze them like that. Or squeeze them at all.

Obviously, I don’t know the joke, I’m just sure that it wouldn’t make me laugh. Incredibly sure.

The man in the photograph, with his arm round my mistress of the dark tower, making her laugh - filling her with laughter, filling her with pleasure, filling her with bits of himself, for all I know - is Russell P Barnes.

We’re going to take a break there. Join us after I’ve thrown the box of slides across the room.

Twenty

Life is made up of sobs,

sniffles, and smiles,

with sniffles predominating.