The fourth time. She offers to call them a taxi. She offers, yes, she does all the running. She goes out to buy breakfast, she offers, yes, she nips out to get it. She makes coffee, yes, she offers, and carries it and milk and cups on the tray and washes up afterwards.

‘I’ll do it,’ she says and does it, and he lets her do it, and thanks her for doing it and says he is not used to women doing things for him, a nice surprise, he says, and she is delighted. If he forgets his jacket, she will run up seven flights of stairs to fetch it from the wardrobe for him and seize the opportunity to look at his clothes, they are so different from other men’s clothes. She thinks once or twice or several times: I can’t do this for ever.