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hoping for it to be set alight, but it was useless. His hand slid a little further up my skirt and I had to bunch mine into a fist to stop
myself from pushing him away. Tell him you have a headache, I told myself frantically. I mean, for goodness’ sake, having sex with a man when you don’t want to have sex with him is
basically a lazy form of rape. You’ve read all the books! It’s your body! What would Germaine say if she could see you now!
    But he’s your boyfriend,
a small voice pointed out,
and you’re supposed to want to have sex with him.
    So just keep going, I concluded. Sex had been hit and miss over the last few months and sometimes I had found myself taking a long while to get going. Just hang in there, I instructed myself,
and it will come – so to speak.
    I squeezed my eyes very tightly. Still not even a pulse. I pointed out to myself that I was thinking too much. Sex required the unbridling of the mind from thought; I needed to allow my senses
to take over, to become abstract. I let my hands flow up through his hair and it struck me that the thickness was just how I’d imagined the
Daily Telegraph
guy’s would feel.
Suddenly I pictured him, Nigel, kissing me, and desire flared in a blue flame. I ran my hands down to Anthony’s trousers, caressing him, only to find that he was entirely flat. I wondered
idly how big the
Daily Telegraph
guy might be by comparison . . .
    Lucy
, a voice that sounded like my mother’s berated me,
what are you thinking?
    ‘Er, maybe we should wait till after dinner. Wouldn’t want to miss our booking.’ Anthony breathed out and pulled away. ‘I’d better, ah, go and feed Lyra.’
    I saw the shame on his face and realised with alarm that his Flat Stanley was something he was very conscious of. He left his anxiety behind him like steam in the air. I reapplied my lipstick
and now it was my hands that were shaking. What if he had been thinking the same as me? What if it had all been a chore for him too? I couldn’t remember a time ever when he hadn’t been
instantly hard from just a kiss. What if he had been touching me and thinking, ‘
Oh God, Lucy is such a foul kisser, and she really is so flat-chested – how come I never noticed
before? And God, I just want to get this over now before dinner so I don’t have to sit through my meal thinking about the hassle of it later on
. . .?’
    Or, worse, what if he had been fantasising about another girl? During the early stages of our relationship, Anthony had surprised and touched me with his emphasis on loyalty. ‘I might have
been a cad in the past, but I’m not now. I’d never,
ever
cheat on you,’ he’d reassure me, also warning me, with fierce passion, that if I ever strayed from him, he
would never speak to me again as long as he lived.
    And so, unlike some of my girlfriends, I’d never had to worry. When Anthony told me he was working late at the office, I knew he was working late. I never had to speculate about some
gorgeous blonde secretary, because he always hired old boots to avoid temptation.
    And yet. Before he had met me, he had been a cad. He had told me I had changed his ways – but what if he was sliding back to them? What if he had been kissing me and picturing some girl he
sat opposite on the Tube on the way to work?
    What awful thoughts.
    That was the trouble with infidelity – you became more suspicious. If you couldn’t even trust yourself, how could you trust anyone else?
    We took a taxi to The House and got caught in the rush-hour traffic. At least all the honking filled our long silences. We both yawned a lot, as though emphasising how tired we
were. When we got to the restaurant, we found they’d lost our booking.
    Anthony is naturally very good-natured and patient, but everyone has their flaws, their weak points. And if there is one thing that makes him mad, it’s bad restaurant behaviour. It seems
to act as some sort of trigger for a Jekyll to Hyde transformation which