He is being honest, she realises, and she can handle his fear of the deep, she can work with it. But in the same letter he writes something else, an issue she has suspected in him, but hoped wasn’t there, something she might not be able to live with. Uptown girl meets underdog, he writes. Uptown girl, that’s her, Ida. The underdog, that’s him, Arnold Bush, a senior university lecturer. He doesn’t know enough about her yet, that is the problem. He is guessing. He is speculating. He can sense her strength, the one she is slowly discovering. The fearlessness, the independence she doesn’t yet have, but is in the process of developing, he can sense it and he may not be able to handle it, if he can’t be the teacher, what is he?

‘Why do you need me?’ he asks her, much later.

‘I don’t need you,’ she says. ‘I love you.’