He said: You are the screen. I am the movie.

She thought he was wonderful.

He thought he was wonderful too.

But men do not become wonderful until they have lived for at least one hundred years.

He said: ‘Give me your body.’

She said: ‘You can have it when I’m finished with it.’ Did she know she was quoting an American feminist?

Torrens tended to the axiomatic. ‘You attract: therefore you must gratify.’

This was no more than Ferol Hedlock expected of men. Sex was their addiction. But Ferol, like the best olive oil, was cold-pressed extra virgin.

Ferol had attracted Dr Torrens Birdborn because it would not be necessary first to take her out for an expensive meal or to the cinema and waste half of a promising evening before getting down to the sex. Besides, he considered her an area of outstanding natural beauty.

His instincts were the same as an amoeba’s: to feed and to reproduce. He just went about it in a more evolved way. He simply swept women off his feet. Or he always had.

Of course, in time, intimacies were permitted. Torrens augured in.

At first they talked the intimate talk of strangers. The kind that becomes impossible at a certain point after marriage. They would live in his country for a year, Torrens explained, then return to hers. It was the first lie he told her, ...