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turns back to me as they drive off. He grins, a bit wolfish. ‘That was fun.’
    ‘Sort of,’ I say. I feel like newly sprayed crops, covered by a thin, invisible layer of humiliation. I take Marcus’s hand, a little unsteady on my high heels. ‘Do you think Juliet hates me? You know, wax dolls, pins?’
    He stops, swinging round theatrically and encircling my waist.
    ‘Come on, let’s walk a bit. Don’t be so bloody stupid. How could
anyone
hate you?’
    The road feels very empty all of a sudden, eerily quiet. Something makes me dart a look behind me, even though the only things to see are overpriced armoires trapped behind plate glass. I hold on a little more tightly to Marcus, wishing I could let the contents of today tumble straight out of me, like water from a jug. Of course I can’t.
    ‘Even if she doesn’t hate me, she hates the idea of me. Not as much as Christian, but you know . . .’
    I watch his face as he runs my hypothesis through the computer.
    ‘Tell you what I do know. Life’s short, and the sooner she realizes that, the happier she’ll be. What would you say? I’m
modelling
it for her.’
    He sets off again, a problem solved. He’s sneaky, the way his quick brain swallows the jargon and vomits it up, reconstituted in a way that suits him. I lag behind him, trying to drag his urgent feet into step with mine.
    ‘Do you miss her?’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘Li-la,’ I sing-song.
    ‘Not after the last couple of years. I didn’t know what a vindictive bitch she could be.’ I feel myself recoil at the venom. He senses it, I think. ‘I don’t have to, do I?’ he adds more softly. ‘Once you’ve got kids with someone, they’re never really out of your life.’
    ‘Is that what commitment is? Children?’
    ‘It’s the only one that’s permanent, isn’t it? Rest of them are written on paper. That one’s made of flesh and blood.’
    ‘Sometimes,’ I say, my voice catching, but too slightly for him to notice. He could remember, but I know he won’t. I should do what I’d sagely advise any of my patients to: speak up, rather than silently resent him for not being Mystic Meg; but I don’t. I never do. I only show him the manicured lawns, never the compost heap. Does he do the same? I look at his profile, the jut of his hawk-like nose, his angular cheekbone. It’s a slick package.
    ‘Is it not enough commitment for you? Is that it?’ says Marcus, stopping suddenly. ‘Do you want something sparkly on your finger before you live with me but you’re too postmodern to admit it?’
    My flat flashes into my mind, the way the door clunks shut after me. The way I can flick the deadlock for an extra bit of security.
    ‘No. It’s not that.’
    ‘Then what is it? You trying to suss me out with all these questions about Lila? Work out whether I’m worth putting all your chips on red for?’
    ‘No!’ I say, hating how inarticulate I am tonight. ‘It’s just, it’s huge, isn’t it?’ I grab his hands between mine, stiff to my touch. ‘We’re not kids. We know what can happen.’
    Sometimes I do feel like a child – a weird, supersized one, responsible and hopelessly irresponsible all at once. It’s so long since I lived with someone – Jamie, my twentysomething boyfriend – and the truth is, I wasn’t very nice to him. Marcus stares at me, his eyes burning.
    ‘Bit of positive thinking might come in handy right now, don’t you think? In your professional opinion?’
    ‘If we move in . . .’ I look at him, continue more quietly. ‘I don’t want to have to move back out.’
    His face softens. We’re under a street light, the lines and crevices of his face smoothed out by its sympathetic yellowish hue.
    ‘I’m not going to skip out on you.’
    ‘I hate it when people make those kind of promises,’ I snap, before I can edit myself. ‘You can’t say that.’
    ‘Well guess what, I just did,’ he says, grinning, refusing to rise to it. His certainty in his own certainty makes me