The past they brought with them to this bed was not – how could it be? – populated by French emperors and English tarts, that was just the skin of it. More like, they carried with them the ghostly circle of rice powder scattered on Eliza's dressing table or the unexpected beauty of his valet's hands. They brought the smell of vegetable peelings, his favourite saddle, a pool she swam in as a child. They brought, finally, themselves: the landscape of his shoulders as he dropped his head above her, the tracery of veins on her white breast. All these things glimpsed, or nearly glimpsed. All these things swelling in their minds, a bubble impossibly big. And when the bubble bursts they are showered, not with pianos, valets, saddles, lovers, meadowsweet, silks; when it burst their minds are (pop!) a blank. Hope. The feel, quite simply, of him-inside-her-around-him, the feel of flesh turning to silk, of silk turning to muscle, and wanting everything! everything! because they are nothing now, and afraid that they will be destroyed by it – by the too-muchness of him and the too-muchness of her. And so:

Fifteen:

Pop! Nothing.

Sixteen:

A blank.

Seventeen:

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

Eighteen:

Everything.

Nineteen:

Everything!

Twenty:

And a little bit… more.

Usually at this point, the man would roll off and look for his boots, but they stayed and stroked each other. He fingered her necklace – perhaps it was this had made him pause. She ran her hands along the flesh of his back – so neatly packed. She started to laugh. They had surprised themselves. He reached down by the bedside, and hauled up a bottle of slightly flat champagne.