The next time she was more relaxed, and gripped him hard with her legs. He couldn’t tell whether she came or not.

‘Gosh you’re strong,’ he said afterwards.

‘Is strong bad?’

‘No, no. Not at all. Strong’s good.’

But the next time he noticed that she didn’t grip him so hard. She didn’t much like him playing with her breasts either. No, that was unfair. She didn’t seem to mind if he did or didn’t. Or rather, if he wanted to, that was fine, but it was for him, not for her. That’s what he understood, anyway. And who said you had to talk about everything in the first week?

He was glad neither of them was any good at flirting: it was a kind of deception. Whereas Andrea was never anything but straight with him. She didn’t talk much, but what she said was what she did. She would meet him where and when he asked, and be standing there, looking out for him, brushing a streak of hair out of her eyes, holding on to her bag more firmly than was necessary in this town.

‘You’re as reliable as a Polish builder,’ he told her one day.

‘Is that good?’

‘That’s very good.’

‘Is English expression?’

‘It is now.’

She asked him to correct her English when she made a mistake. He got her to say, ‘I don’t think so’ instead of ‘I do not think’; but actually, he preferred the way she talked. He always understood her, and those phrases which weren’t quite right seemed part of her. Maybe he didn’t want her talking like an Englishwoman in case she started behaving like an Englishwoman – well, like one in particular. And anyway, he didn’t want to play the teacher.

It was the same in bed. Things are what they are, he said to himself. If she always wore a nightie, perhaps it was a Catholic thing – not that she ever mentioned going to church. If he asked her to do stuff to him, she did it, and seemed to enjoy it; but she didn’t ask him to do stuff back to her – didn’t even seem to like his hand down there much. But this didn’t bother him; she was allowed to be who she was.