They parted after a couple of hours, and a little piece of him was surprised when she called two days later to suggest they hook up again. This time they went to a club and he danced with her, and when she lifted her hands above her head, he had to focus really hard not to picture her pinned to a bed. She was just out of a relationship, she explained, over the third or fourth drink. The break-up had been awful. She was not sure she wanted to be involved in anything serious. He made all the right noises. He told her about Lara, his ex-wife, and how she had said her work was always going to be her first love, and that she had to leave him to save her sanity.

‘Bit melodramatic,’ Deanna said.

‘She’s Italian. And an actress. Everything with her is melodramatic.’

‘Was,’ she corrected him. She kept her eyes on his as she said it. She asked him about work – was blunt in her admiration of what he had done with the company. ‘I mean I’m a total tech klutz,’ she said. ‘But it sounds amazing.’ She had picked up the beginnings of an American accent. Her leg rested against his.

He tried to explain it. She watched his mouth as he spoke, which was oddly distracting. He told her everything: the first trial versions he and Ronan had created in his bedroom, the software glitches, the meetings with a media tycoon who had flown them to Texas in his private jet and sworn at them when they refused his buyout offer.

He told her of the day they’d gone public, when he had sat on the edge of his bath watching the share price go up and up on his phone, and begun to shake as he grasped quite how much his whole life was about to change.

‘You’re that wealthy?’

‘I do okay.’

‘Define okay.’

He was aware that he was this close to sounding like a dick. ‘Well … I was doing better until I got divorced, obviously … I do okay. You know, I’m not really interested in the money.’ He shrugged. ‘I just like doing what I do. I like the company. I like having ideas and translating them into things that actually work for people.’

‘But you sold it?’

‘It was getting too big, and I was told that if we did, the guys in suits could handle all the financial stuff. I was never interested in that side of things. I just own a lot of shares.’ He stared at her. ‘You have really nice hair.’ He had no idea why on earth he said this.

She’d kissed him in the taxi. Deanna Lewis had slowly turned his face to hers with a slim, perfectly manicured hand and kissed him. Even though it was more than twelve years since they were at university – twelve years in which Ed Nicholls had been briefly married to a model/actress/whatever – some little voice in his head kept saying: Deanna Lewis is kissing me. And she wasn’t just kissing him: she hitched up her skirt and slid a long, slim leg over him, apparently oblivious to the taxi driver, pressed into him, and kissed his face, his neck, and slid her hands up his shirt until he couldn’t speak or think, and when he came to pay outside his flat, his words came out thick and stupid, and he not only didn’t wait for the change but didn’t even check what was in the wad of notes he handed the driver.

And the sex was great. Oh, God, it was good. She had porn moves, for Christ’s sake. With Lara, in the last months, sex had felt like she was granting him some kind of favour – dependent on some set of rules that only she seemed to understand: whether he had paid her enough attention, or spent enough time with her or taken her out to dinner, or understood how he’d hurt her feelings. Sometimes she would turn silently away from him afterwards like he’d done something awful.

When Deanna Lewis looked at him naked, her eyes seemed to light up from inside with a kind of hunger. Oh, God. Jesus Christ. Deanna Lewis.

Afterwards, she had lain in bed, lit a cigarette, and said, ‘I hardly smoke any more, but after that …’ and chuckled throatily.

‘I might take it up myself.’

And then, after she had finished her cigarette, she had given him head so good that he had suspected the downstairs neighbours would be lighting cigarettes too.

She stayed with Ed the night after, and went home reluctantly. She was living with her brother in Fulham in the week, and at weekends in Bristol with her parents. That first week she emailed daily and rang him three times. He didn’t tell Ronan. He instant-messaged her from his bed, his laptop a glowing ocean in the middle of his vast duvet, and tried not to think about her. They were just mucking around, he told himself. It was nothing serious. It wasn’t as if Ronan was ever likely to bump into her.

Besides, he and Deanna were both just out of bad break-ups. They had discussed how cynical they were about relationships, how it was good to find your feet alone. And then one night he’d had a few drinks. He’d been feeling a bit melancholy. He’d paused for about thirty seconds, then typed: ‘Come out with me this weekend.’

‘I can’t,’ came the reply.

‘Why?’

‘Broke.’

Ed thought of the way her long dark hair felt entwined in his fingers. He thought about how nice it had been just to have someone in his head who wasn’t Lara. And he wrote: ‘I’ll pay. Come.’

She arrived on Friday night. They walked round the local bars, took a trip down the river, had a pub lunch. She linked her arm in his and he found himself staring at her fingers and exclaiming silently, Deanna Lewis! I’m sleeping with Deanna Lewis! She was funny and sparky. She had this way of smiling that made you smile right back. And it was just so good to have guilt-free sex with someone whom you weren’t afraid might steal your wallet while you were asleep.

On Sunday night they had a good meal, drank a lot of champagne, and then headed back to his place, and she had worn these crazy black silk knickers with ribbons at the sides that you could just pull undone so that they slid slowly down her thighs like a ripple of water. She rolled a joint afterwards, and he didn’t normally smoke but he had felt his head spin pleasurably, had rested his fingers in her dark silky hair and felt like life was actually pretty good.

And then she said, ‘I told my parents about us.’

He was having trouble focusing. ‘Your parents?’

‘You don’t mind, do you? It’s just been so good … feeling like … I belong in something again, you know?’

Ed found himself staring at a point on the ceiling. It’s okay, he told himself. Lots of people tell their parents stuff. Even after two weeks.

‘I’ve been so depressed. And now I just feel …’ she beamed at him ‘… happy. Like madly happy. Like I wake up and I’m thinking about you. Like everything’s going to be okay.’

His mouth felt oddly dry. He wasn’t sure if it was the joint. ‘Depressed?’ he said.

‘I’m okay now. I mean, my folks were really good. After the last episode they took me to the doctor and got me pills. And they definitely helped. They do apparently lower your inhibitions, but I can’t say that anyone’s complained! HA-HA-HA-HA!’

He handed her the joint.

‘I just feel things very intensely, you know? My psychiatrist says I’m exceptionally sensitive. Some people bounce through life. I’m not one of those people. Sometimes I can read about an animal dying or a child being murdered somewhere in another country, and I will literally cry all day. Literally. I was like it at college too. Don’t you remember?’

‘No.’

She rested her hand on his cock. Suddenly Ed felt fairly certain it was not going to spring to life.

She looked up at him. Her hair was half over her face and she blew at it. ‘It’s such a bummer losing your job and your home. You have no idea what it’s like to be really broke.’ She gazed at him as if weighing up how much to tell him. ‘I mean properly broke.’

‘What – what do you mean?’

‘Well … like I owe my ex a load of money but I’ve told him I can’t pay him. I have too much on my credit card right now. And he still keeps ringing me, going on and on about it. It’s very stressful. He doesn’t understand how stressed I get.’