I had been cold, but now I was hot. I dragged my fur from around my neck, my face suddenly burning. My legs felt weak, and I sat down where I was, on the steps of a drinking-fountain. Aidan sat down one step lower, so our faces were on the same level. “I can’t do that!” I hissed.

“Why not?” His face had its hungry look. “You’re the obvious person to do it.”

I drew the fox’s body backwards and forwards between my hands, feeling its softness, wishing as ever that I was someone else. That nanny in her olive-green uniform, hand-in-hand with a toddler. The man running to and fro on the grass with a kite string in his hand, watching the kite dance in the sky with more interest than his small son. Any of the stone figures that adorned Marble Arch. “Aidan, you know very well why not. Acting with a script and a director is one thing, but this is real life. It’s deceiving, which isn’t the same thing at all.”

“But David deceived you!”

“Exactly!” I said irrationally. “And if I go anywhere near him, he’ll treat me just like he did in that hotel.” My voice began to waver a little. “I can’t go through a scene like that again. I don’t know David. I don’t know you. I’ll never be able to decide whether anything is fact, ever.” Inexplicably cold again, though the sun was strengthening, I put my fur back on. “Don’t you understand? I’m scared.”

“Clara, if you would just try and understand…”

“I do understand!” Tears smarted behind my eyes. The events of the last twenty-four hours had left me as battered as if it had been me that David had kicked to the ground, not Aidan. “Look, Aidan, I am not a …” – I struggled for the word I wanted – “a puppet, or a doll or something, with no feelings. I can’t turn on David and give him a dose of his own medicine, as if he meant nothing to me. He does mean something to me, as I thought we established last night.”

“Please hear me out, Clara, I beg you…”

I stood up. Park Lane swam before me. I blinked and it recovered its clarity. “No, I won’t. I don’t want to hear any more about this. Thank you for everything, but I am going back to the flat now to pack my case.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Aidan got to his feet. “You don’t know the way back, and anyway you haven’t got a door key.” He took my arm, and as he did so, the first drops of rain began to fall.