Oh, for God ’s sake!’ All of a sudden she was angry, but more, he felt, because he was going on, not because of what he was actually demanding. She thought him ridiculous and said so. And then she added all the things he ’d thought himself: that people like them didn’t get divorces, that unless his girlfriend was well-heeled the whole thing would be a sheer bloody nonsense, with bloody solicitors the only ones to benefit.

‘They’ll send you to the cleaners, your bloody solicitors will,’ she loudly pointed out, anger still trembling in her voice. ‘You’d be paying them back for years.’

‘I don’t care,’ he began, although he did. ‘I don’t care about anything except—’

‘Of course you do, you damn fool.’

‘Hilda—’

‘Look, get over her. Take her into a park after dark or something. It ’ll make no odds to you and me.’