He knew just how to get a rise from me at that first meeting.

One of the reasons why we’d always failed to trap Finn with the spectacular list of professionals we’d lined up for him was because he was so amused by the idea of honey traps. He’d talk to them for hours in order to waste our time, just as some men want only to talk to prostitutes. In this as in other things, Finn was quite childish and the girls we threw at him were a source of hilarity and disdain for him.

Afterwards, when we’d made love, he said, ‘You do realise I’m going to have to use you. I can’t kick the youngest female colonel in the KGB out of bed. I’m going to have to sleep with you a lot, if that’s OK.’

‘Keep up,’ I said. We’re not the KGB any more. ‘We call it the FSB these days.’

But Finn always called us the KGB to the end. ‘It’s the same thing, isn’t it,’ he said. ‘It’s just an old dog with a new name. There’s no difference, except that now you’ve all been to business school as well as Honey Trap High.’

‘Are you trying to ruin the evening?’ I said.

He turned to me and it was the first time I saw him not play-acting. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, I don’t want to ruin anything.’

We made love again, and afterwards it felt so strange, like we were two lovers who’d known each other for years.

‘We’ve met before, I know it,’ Finn said.

‘And in what incarnation would that be?’ I replied.

He held my hands above my head. ‘No incarnation. You were pure dust and so was I.’

I undid his fingers. ‘Why don’t you do something to jog my memory?’ I murmured. But he’d fallen asleep.