‘It’s your birthday?’

‘Next week. Next Tuesday, in fact.’

He kisses me again. Tuesday. It’s become our day. We haven’t missed one yet, and in between we chat online. It’s almost as good, but not quite. We share each other’s lives. We describe the things we’d like to do to each other, with each other. We tell each other our most private fantasies. But Tuesday is the day we meet.

‘I should’ve known that. I should know when your birthday is.’

I smile. How could he? It’s something else I haven’t told him, something I’ve kept for myself, along with my husband’s real name, and the fact that I have a son.

But I have told him the truth about Kate.

I hadn’t intended to, but last week he was telling me how he’d known from the moment we first began chatting that he wanted to meet me. I felt guilty.

How could I reply? I only met you because I thought you might have some connection to my dead sister.

‘It’s not that simple,’ I said, instead. I decided to be honest, to tell him the truth. There’d been enough lies. ‘I have something to tell you. My sister, the one I told you about? She didn’t kill herself. She was murdered.’

That familiar look of shock. He reached out to touch me, then hesitated. ‘But …?’

I told him what had happened, that the only thing taken was an earring. I even described it to him. Gold drop, with a tiny dreamcatcher design with turquoise feathers. I told him about going to see Anna, the list of names I found in Kate’s things, the first time I’d logged on to the website. Encountrz.

‘And that’s why you came to meet me?’

‘I’m sorry. Yes.’

He held me close. ‘Jayne, I understand. Maybe I can help.’

‘Help? How?’

‘There are other sites. Your sister might have been on those, too. I could try to find her.’

It was tempting, but it felt futile, and I wasn’t sure I could go through it all again. I told him I’d think about it.

And now he’s here, in front of me. Talking about how he hadn’t known when my birthday was. ‘We’ll do something special,’ he says. He picks up my camera. ‘You’ve been taking photos?’

Special? I wonder what he means. Go out for a meal, take in a show? It sounds ridiculous.

‘I thought it was time. See if I’ve still got it.’

‘And do you?’

I shrug, though I’m being modest. Today, on the bridge, I’d felt like the old me, back when I was in Berlin and taking pictures all the time. I can already feel myself slipping back into my talent. It’s like going home.

He holds up the camera. ‘May I?’

I sip my drink. ‘If you like.’

He turns it on and flicks through the pictures, nodding as he does. ‘They’re good.’

‘I brought you some of my old shots. Like you asked?’

He puts the camera down and takes a step towards me.

‘Want to see them now?’

He kisses me. ‘Later,’ he says, then kisses me again. ‘God, I’ve missed you.’ He slips the towel from his waist and I glance down.

‘I’ve missed you, too.’ And even though it’s only been a week since the last time I was in a room like this – and we’ve talked online every day – I mean it.

We kiss again. I feel him stiffen between us and know that in a moment he’ll be on top of me, and then inside me, and then once again everything will be all right.

Afterwards, he stands at the window. A gust of wind lifts the curtains and I catch a glimpse of the street outside. We’re on the first floor; I see the sky, wisps of cloud, I hear the murmur of the street, the traffic, the voices. It’s hot in the room, sticky.

I let my eyes travel the curve of his body, his neck, his back, his behind. I notice his blemishes, the details I don’t see on the camera and forget every time we meet. The mole on his neck, the vaccination scar on his shoulder that matches Hugh’s, the red flush of a birthmark on his upper thigh. It’s been a month now, and these details still surprise me. I grab my camera; he turns as I click the shutter, and when he sees I’ve taken a picture of him his face breaks into the same half-smile I used to see on Marcus.

‘Come back to bed. Let’s look at these pictures.’

We lie, side by side. The envelope I’ve brought with me is between us, its contents spilled out. My work, my past. A pile of glossy ten-by-eights.

He holds up a picture of Marcus.

‘And this one?’

It’s Marcus in the Mirror, and I tell him the same story that I told Anna, more or less. ‘An ex. That was taken in the bathroom of the flat we lived in.’

‘Also in Berlin?’

‘Yes.’ I’ve told him about my time there. About what I used to be like, who I was before I became the person I am now.

‘You were happy there?’

I shrug. It’s not an answer.

‘Some of the time.’

‘Why did you leave?’

I sigh and turn on to my back. I look at the ceiling, at the curlicues in the plasterwork. When I don’t answer he puts the photo down and moves closer, so that he’s right next to me. I feel the warmth of his body. He must sense my struggle.

‘When did you leave?’

It’s an easier question, and I answer straight away. ‘I went over there in the mid-nineties, and stayed for three or four years.’

He laughs. ‘When I was at school …’

I laugh, too. ‘You were.’

He kisses me. My shoulder. ‘It’s a good job I love older women,’ he says.

And there’s that word again. Love. We haven’t used it. It’s something we’ve approached only obliquely. I love it when you … I love the way you …

We haven’t yet lost the verb, the qualifier. We haven’t gone as far as I love you.

‘So, I was hanging out, you know. Bars and clubs. Living in a squat.’

‘East Berlin?’

I shake my head. ‘Kreuzberg.’

He smiles. ‘Bowie … Iggy Pop.’

‘Yes, though that was years before. I was taking pictures. It started off small, but people liked my stuff. Y’know? I met this guy who ran a gallery. The picture editor at this magazine heard about me, wanted to use me for some pictures. From there it kind of went crazy. Exhibitions, even fashion shoots.’ I pause. I’m approaching it now, this thing I want to tell him, this thing he might not like. ‘This was the mid-nineties. Heroin chic.’

He says nothing.

‘And, well, there was a lot of it about.’

A beat.

‘Heroin?’

I want my silence to be answer enough, but it isn’t. I have to tell him.

‘Yes.’

‘You took heroin?’

I look at him. His expression is unreadable. Is it that hard to believe? A part of me wants to rise up, to defend myself. Plenty of people did, I want to say. Still do. What’s the big deal?

But I don’t. I force myself to take a deep breath. I want to respond, rather than react. ‘We all did.’ I turn back to face him. ‘I mean, I didn’t at first. I went over there with Marcus. He was an artist. A painter. Very good, very talented. A bit older than me. I met him when he was at art school. It was him who encouraged me to take up photography. When he moved to Berlin, I went with him.’ I nod towards the pictures between us. ‘We fell in with that group—’

Or they fell in with us.

‘A bad crowd?’

‘No.’ Again that urge to defend. ‘No. I wouldn’t say that. They were my friends. They looked after me.’ I’m thinking of Frosty, and the others. They weren’t junkies. Or even addicts, not in the way that he probably thinks of the word. ‘They weren’t a bad crowd. They were just … we were just … different, I guess. We didn’t fit in. We all just gravitated to each other.’

I hesitate. It’s easier than you think, I want to say. Taking heroin every weekend becomes every other day becomes every day. It’s frightening, going back there. Though not all of my memories are bad, it still feels raw. I’m being dragged back, and down. It’s not a place I can stay too long.

‘The drugs were only part of that.’

‘So, what happened?’

‘When I left?’

‘Yes. The other week, you said your husband “saved you”?’