To him the words had only ever meant “Get on with it!” When he made his infrequent visits to the lavs at Parker’s Piece or in the Market Square, eyebrows raised as if at the exploits of someone else, he always seemed to find gratification at once, from a man who clearly was a loiterer, and had probably been loitering for hours. He was through to the operator, who sounded relaxed, almost sleepy, but a nice woman, who took pleasure in bringing sundered friends together. A man came past and nodded “Hi!” to him, like an overworked colleague – Robin gave an abstracted smile and peered into the imagined middle-distance of the expectant caller. He was both keen to talk and keen to have the conversation over.

When Jane answered he was talking at once, and he felt it like a rebuke when the operator spoke over him to ask her if she would accept the call.

Then, “Hello Janey, it’s me,” he said, “did I wake you up?” -and heard his words repeated, with a fractional delay, by the unsparing mimicry of the transatlantic echo.

“No, I was awake,” she said, as if it might be an emergency.

“It must be quite late.”

“It’s twenty past one.”

“Anyway, you’re all right?”

“Is everything all right?”

“Yes, it’s amazing, I can’t tell you.”

“Because if it is, I’m so glad you rang.”

“Oh thank you, darling,” murmured Robin, with a vague sense of undeserved success. “I just wanted to hear your voice, and tell you I’m all in one piece” – and the echo gave him back his last words. When he spoke again, he found she was already talking.

“Actually I was asleep. I’d just got off, I’m extremely tired, but I’m so excited at the moment that it’s quite difficult to go to sleep.”

Robin had left her only two days earlier and her words were at odds with his assumption that she must be missing him terribly. He was jealous of her excitement, but also reassured, in a way, that she could be excited without him; she seemed to license his own unmentioned freedoms. “Has something happened?” he asked lightly and cautiously. He was surprised to hear a giggle, maybe just a sign of nerves.