Bruce himself was now engaged, to Julia Donald, the daughter of a wealthy hotel owner and businessman, a man who understood Bruce extremely well and had realised that money, and an expensive car, were just the inducements required to get him to marry his daughter. And for her part, Julia understood Bruce too and had realised that what was needed to trap him was not only her father’s inducements but wiles of her own, female wiles involving her unexpected pregnancy – “Such a surprise, Brucie, but there we are!”

For Bruce, the idea of marriage was not completely without appeal, but it was an appeal that depended on its being distant; imminent marriage, followed by fatherhood, was not what he had had in mind. But when Julia’s father made clear the terms on which he would welcome Bruce into the family – generous ones by any standards – Bruce’s misgivings had been allayed. Perhaps being married to Julia would not be so bad, he thought. He could switch off in the face of constant wittering. Most men did that, he thought, with their wives. And he would never have to worry again about buying a flat – Julia owned a perfectly good flat in Howe Street, worth, Bruce had calculated, at least six hundred thousand pounds at current market prices; and she had no mortgage. In fact, Bruce was not sure if she even knew what a mortgage was; whereas Bruce, like most people, knew very well what a mortgage was and understood the difference between those who had a large mortgage and those who had no mortgage at all. They walked differently, he thought.

He would also never have to worry about a job now that Julia’s father had made him a director of his property company and given him sole charge of the wine bar he owned in George Street. If Julia came with all that, then the least he could do, he decided, was to be civil to her.