‘Well, good evening to you,’ I said. ‘You’ve pinched my girl.’

Henley smiled just so slightly, and shook his head ever so slightly too, and said to me seriously, ‘Naturally, when we’re together, you can still come and see her.’

‘Can I!’ I said. ‘You think I’d go near her in those circumstances’

‘Yes,’ he said gently.

‘Well, mister, then you don’t know me!’ I cried.

Hearing this frank exchange of greetings in the passage, Suzette herself emerged and stood there looking radiant: I mean, it is the only word to use that I can think of, she really shone, and wore and brittle Cinderella-in-the-bathroom-scene creation, one of those fragile things that girls, who really are so tough, as we all know, adore to climb into, to make us think they’re sweet seventeen in person (which, in her case, in fact she was). She saw we’d got off to a dodgy start in our conversation, so she came out and grabbed us both, one hand apiece, and pulled us into her apartment, and did all those things with drinks and fags, and radiograms that are supposed to melt a polar situation.