I bought the bread and strawberries and some pastries, and Aidan and I walked through the bleached streets to our little green-tiled courtyard and up the steps to the apartment. It was cool enough, but Aidan went straight to the bottle of water he had left packed in ice from the ice van that morning and poured us each a glass. “Let’s pretend this has got a shot of whisky in it,” he said, and we drank.

“May I see the photographs?” I asked impatiently. “How did you get them done so quickly? And, for that matter, why have you been sacked?”

He put down his glass. “Actually, that’s all one question and all one answer. I sneaked into the darkroom to develop the photographs instead of getting ready for my scene. Of course, in came the cinematographer, who guards that darkroom as if it were his only child, or possibly his wife, and bawled me out.”

“That’s hardly enough to fire you, though, is it?”

“Ah. Well, I was already on my fifth or sixth warning. You know what I’m like, bored to death with it all. Gio kept letting me off, as I’m a sort of friend, but even he had to give in when the cinematographer, the costume lady, the AD and even the old codger who makes the coffee started to moan about me.” He put his hand in the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a white envelope about the size of an ordinary letter. “By the time they’d finished arguing, I’d managed to get these photographs done, so when Gio came and said it was the last straw, I scarpered before they could change their minds.”

He laid out the photographs on the table: David about to sniff the cocaine; David holding his hand in front of his face, though not succeeding in hiding it; David lunging at the camera with rage in his eyes. I looked at them, and the world swam. I blinked away the inexplicable tears. “They’re perfect, Aidan.”

He gathered them and put them back in their envelope. “I wouldn’t have got them at all if you hadn’t done your bit so superlatively well.” He held up the envelope. “Got the negatives in here as well. I’ll put them in a bank deposit box.”

“Aidan…” I began. There was a confession on my lips; I wasn’t sure whether to make it. But even if I regretted it afterwards, I could not be anything but truthful to a man who had bared such painful truths of his own. “About doing my bit superlatively well.”

He was puzzled. “Yes?”

“When I was with David, it was strange. It was confusing. It was as if I saw two people.”

Aidan was frowning, but his eyes willed me to go on.

“I’m not explaining this very well, am I? What I mean is that I wasn’t repelled by him. The moment I saw him I remembered how much I … felt for him.”

“And?” said Aidan, still watching me, still frowning.

“And so it wasn’t superlative acting or anything. He believed me because the emotion I felt was actually that – emotion. I was even nearly crying. On the beach, when he kissed me, I was sure I’d be repelled. But I wasn’t.”

Aidan’s head went down; his hair flopped over his forehead. Incongruously, I decided he needed to go to the barber. “So you are still in love with him,” he said in a small voice. “Is that what you are saying?”

“No, not at all! I just needed to tell you the truth. I was unprepared for the rush of memories and recognition of what he looks like and everything that I felt in that moment. But when he kissed me I felt nothing, Aidan, nothing! And then it all came back – the way he duped me, his infidelity, his treatment of your mother, his lies… Please, believe me, my love for him has passed. It’s dead.”