Beryl knocked on the door and opened it. Her eyes were shining brightly. Obviously she was hoping I’d throw her some little gossipy tit-bit.

‘Forget it,’ I told her before she could even come in.

‘She is beautiful, though, isn’t she?’ she said, coming in and perching on one corner of my desk.

I sighed. ‘Yes.’

‘Did you have any success at all?’ she tried again.

‘Beryl,’ I said warningly.

She clasped her hands to her chest. ‘It’s me. Beryl. I’m not about to run off and sell the story to one of the tabloids.’

‘No,’ I said firmly.

‘You don’t have to say anything. Just nod or shake your head.’

I looked at her blankly.

‘All right. Be like that then,’ she said sulkily and flounced out of the room. She popped her head around the door again wearing her apologetic face. ‘Oops, it appears in all the excitement I forgot to mention that your cleaning lady called. She couldn’t make it today. An emergency of some kind. She has to go up and see her sister in Brighton. She’ll be around tomorrow.’

‘Right. Thanks.’

‘Well, I’m off then. See you tomorrow.’

‘Yeah, see you tomorrow.’

I heard the front door shut and the place took on the waiting silence of abandoned houses. I poured myself three fingers of whiskey, and took a large swallow. Soon everything would become mellow. I leaned back in my chair and swiveled it around to face the window. People were hunched into their coats and hurrying home. Sitting here alone, I had watched this scene so many times. Until the streets emptied, and then I would pack up and go out for a solitary meal. Usually the Italian around the corner. They knew me there. Il Americano—the American—they called me.

I always had the same. Penne arrabiata to start and then Franco would bring out the day’s special, whatever it was, fish, rabbit, pig’s trotters, sweetbreads.

After a few meals Franco had said, ‘Always you eat alone. Big, beautiful man like you. Why?’

‘Nobody wants me,’ I joked.

He had jerked his head back with exaggerated violence as if recoiling from a striking snake. ‘Nooooo,’ he cried. It was the longest, most horrified no I’d ever heard. ‘Big, beautiful man like you. Not possibile.’ He pulled a chair out and sat beside me and with a conspiratorial nod said, ‘I have beautiful girl for you.’

‘Just the penne arrabiata tonight, I think.’

He moved away toward the kitchen with a wounded air. It was a few weeks before he forgave me and I became il Americano again. But I like Italians. Everything is so dramatic. They behave as if they are in an open air opera. Everything can be solved with a passionate declaration of love.

On the days I did not go to Franco’s I would go to the gym and work out for two hours then end up somewhere more glamorous.

But one thing never changed. I always dined alone. I always went home alone.

Tonight my dick felt heavy and turgid. I was not in the mood for food. I phoned Jenny. That’s not her real name by the way. Her birth name was unpronounceable.

‘Marlow,’ she answered immediately, her voice husky and full of promise. It never failed to strike me, every time I heard it at the end of a phone, how deceiving it was. In truth she was a simple, uncomplicated girl to whom life had been horribly cruel.

‘Can I come around?’ I asked.

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Can you come in…say, one hour?’

‘See you in an hour.’

I placed the phone on the table and watched the pedestrians go by while I worked my way down the whiskey bottle. This was me unwinding after an awful day at the office. The whole time I kept my mind obstinately blank. I never allowed myself to think of her.

When the telephone rang I was already half a bottle deep and starting to feel a little sloshed so I ignored it. The answer machine clicked on. A woman left a message. She wanted to make an appointment to see the resident hypnotist. ‘That’ll be me, darlin’,’ I slurred to the empty office. She left her number and her name.

Twenty minutes before my appointment with Jenny I slipped into my coat, and moving through the shadows of my office walked down the stairs and out into the corridor I shared with the other practitioners in the building. It was as silent as a morgue. Everyone—the dentist on the first floor, the jiu jitsu master masseur and the chiropractor, along with their staff—had gone home. I locked my office and walked the short distance to the thick, black main door. I stepped outside and a cold blast of wind hit me in the face. I smiled. Just what I needed.

I left my car in the underground car park and took the Tube to Paddington.

Jenny opened the door wearing a tight, V-necked, deep pink blouse and a pair of white shorts with frayed hems. ‘Hello, stranger,’ she drawled, leaning seductively by the door frame.

I offered up a smile.

‘Come in,’ she invited, opening the door wider.

I walked in and took my shoes off in the hallway. It was an Asian thing. Everybody had to take their shoes off before they could enter her apartment.

‘You haven’t been to see me for a long time. Have you been away?’

‘No. Just been busy, you know?’

‘I’ve missed you,’ she said.

Ah, Jenny. Poor you. I walked in my socks through her scrupulously clean home to the room where she conducted her business. It had a bed, a dresser, a well-used armchair and a basin and paper towel dispenser attached to the wall.

‘Is it still the same price?’ I asked.

‘You don’t have to pay,’ she replied.

‘Jenny,’ I said tiredly.

‘It’s still the same,’ she said quickly.

I took out my wallet, counted out fifty pounds, and put the notes on her dresser. Then I took off my coat, my jacket, my pants, my socks, and my boxers, and went to sit on the armchair. I laid my head against the backrest and closed my eyes. I felt a tight sensation in my body and my brain was wired. I needed to blow off steam.

‘How have you been, Marlow?’

‘Good,’ I said briefly. ‘And you?’

‘I’ve been well.’

There was a pause. Her apartment was warm and the armchair was comfortable. I wanted to relax.

‘Something about you is different today,’ she observed.

My eyes fluttered open. ‘Yeah?’

‘Yes,’ she said sadly and went out of the room. She came back in with a basin of water with a few drops of perfume. Flower petals were floating on the surface. She put it on the floor and I slipped my feet into the warm, slippery water. The sensation was heaven. After she had washed my feet she massaged them with warm oil. She did not try to make conversation again.

Then she pushed the basin away and her clever mouth closed around the head of my cock. Expertly she rubbed her lips up and down my shaft.

I didn’t want to.

I really didn’t want to think of Olivia, but she slipped into my head, forbidden and intensely alive and naked, but for a pair of shiny black stiletto boots. It was her wedged between my legs, her plump, red mouth stretched wide to receive the thickness of my cock.

She looked up at me with her mercury eyes, not innocent and troubled as she had been in my office, but full of raw sexual knowledge.

In my fantasy I called to her as surely as if I had tugged her nipple clamps. Her face slid up and down my shaft. I ejaculated so quickly Jenny made a small sound of surprise.