"Hold me," he told her. "I know what you mean. I don't mind,"

Without looking at him, she slowly came closer again, then leant against him. Finally her arms went gently round his waist, and for a long time they sat there, while he listened to the sounds of the party, and felt - against his side, and within the perimeter his arm made around her - the gentle ebb and flow of her breath. Please, please, don't come now, Mrs Hunter. Not now, not in this perfect, fragile moment.

Steps thudded on the stairs, and his heart seemed to try to echo them, but the steps and some laughing voices went away. He held her, wrapped in her smell, warmed by her nearness. He felt drugged, by her perfume and her presence; he felt... like he had never felt in his life before.

This is absurd, he told himself. What is going on here? What is happening to me? Right now I feel more happy, more satisfied than in any post-coital daze. Those Somerset nights, in friends" cars, other people's houses, once in a moonlit field; my carefully scored and compared encounters to date; they all mean nothing. Only this matters.

God, you fool.

In a rambling old house in Gospel Oak, in London in January I lose my heart. What are the chances she'll ever love me? Christ, to be like this for ever, to live, to be together, to hold her like this in bed some night when she's afraid of the thunder, when I'm there to hold her, to be held by her.

She stirred against him, and he mistook it for something like the small movements of a child asleep, and smiled down at her through the slow current of perfume rising from her black, turmoiled hair; but she was awake and brought her head up, drawing away from him a little, looking at him, so that he had to hide his smile quickly, because it wasn't something he had meant her to see.