For the first time since my arrival, I looked at him, properly. His hair had been recently washed but not oiled, and stuck up in tufts at the back, as if he had been resting it on a cushion. It was now almost midnight, so he might have been in his bedroom when I rang the doorbell, though he was dressed in old trousers and a shirt without its collar on. On the front of his pullover I detected a cigarette burn, possibly two, and a smear of something like gravy. His face looked just as it always did – self-aware, mocking, alert, smooth. The injuries David had inflicted upon it had healed. I had never noticed before how slim his shoulders and chest were. Or had he got thinner since I had last seen him?

“So what has David done?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I confessed. “I don’t understand. All I know is that he has broken my heart.”

He sighed softly. “Oh, Clara. You’re a nice, loving girl with no experience. A blank canvas for David Penn to put whatever he likes on.”

I could not dispute this. “He said I’m an idiot.”

Aidan made a sound like Grrrumph! and said, “Only an idiot would consider you an idiot, Clara.”

“So David’s the idiot, then?” I took another spoonful of soup. “Aidan, please let’s be serious. I am more of an idiot than you suppose. You see, when David asked me to go away with him to Brighton for the weekend, I didn’t realize he meant I was supposed to, you know …” – I could feel myself blushing helplessly – “share his bed.”

“Ah,” said Aidan with resignation. To my relief, he did not try to make a joke.

“And he’d booked two rooms, because I’d insisted. But there was a bathroom between them, with a door from each room.” I paused. “I suppose it was easy for someone to hide in there.”

He frowned. “Someone was hiding in the bathroom?”

“I know it sounds like something from a penny dreadful,” I said, still red-faced, “but there was a man in there, and when I was changing he suddenly came into my bedroom, and he had a camera and he was taking pictures of me without some of my clothes on.”

The room was utterly silent. By this hour the residents of Bayswater had retired. The window must have been open; a breeze twitched the blue curtains. Aidan whistled softly. “Christ, Clara.”

“And do you know what happened next? David came in through the bathroom too, and he wasn’t wearing his shirt, and he pushed me onto the bed, and…” Unable to go on, I put down my spoon. I got up and looked at the bookshelves through watery eyes, trying not to sniff, hoping Aidan would have the grace to let me gather myself.

But he finished the story for me. “And the man took photographs of you both, on the bed, and David made it look as if you were lovers.” He was on his feet at the gas fire, lighting a spill, fumbling for his cigarettes. “Didn’t he?”

My embarrassment silenced me.

“Clara…” He pondered for a few moments while he lit the cigarette. Then he said in a quiet voice, “You might not understand why David did this, but I think I do. Do you remember what he said to you, if anything? Did he threaten you, for instance?”

“Not threaten, exactly. But he mentioned a woman, and a divorce. And he told me to read my contract and not come near him until it says I have to.”

Aidan looked at me with a sort of half-nervous delicacy. “Ah. Well, it seems to me that the photographs were taken to be used in evidence in a … um, a divorce case, as you say.”

As he said this, suspicion fell on me, and crushed me. “Aidan, whose divorce are we talking about?”

His face was troubled. He took a quick puff on his cigarette, then another one. “Look,” he began, “I am sorry to bring you this news, but as I think you’ve guessed, the divorce in question can only be that of … David himself.”