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Coming from such different worlds, they might have drifted past each other without even passing the time of day had it not been for one of those chance events of university life: they were acting together in a college play.

‘Of course it doesn’t make sense in the way you mean,’ Eleanor replied, leaving James to wonder which way he did mean and, furthermore, what kind of sense it might make in any other way. Thus instead of reducing his uncertainty, Eleanor had actually succeeded in increasing it. Typical of an arts undergraduate. The subject in question was the play that had brought them together both at a series of rather awkward rehearsals in rooms in college and more immediately on a stage in a hall somewhere in Walton Street, she as a female cripple in an old-fashioned pram and he as the witless male condemned to push pram and female around the rather limited universe of the playwright’s imagination. This unlikely duo was searching, so the storyline went, for the city of Tar. Although why they should wish to get to Tar was never made clear. Sub-Beckett, James wanted to say of the play, but lines like that were dangerous when you were talking to someone who was reading English, especially when you were reading science.

‘I suppose not,’ was what he replied, which appeared to cover all possible lines of attack. ‘Do you want another beer?’

‘I haven’t finished this one. ’

‘No. ’

She was smoking. James didn’t smoke because he didn’t like it, but she smoked, rolled her own, in fact, because… what? She did like it? Or did she feel that rolling her own made her seem closer to the working class whose virtues she extolled? He wondered other things – did she smoke pot, perhaps? That was the term in those days. Pot, hash, grass, weed. Shit, if you were feeling very edgy. Probably others that he didn’t know. Anyway, did she? And another, much more disturbing question: did her mouth taste of cigarettes? Disturbing because her mouth was itself disturbing. Full, with a slightly heavy upper lip.

And very red. Somehow not exactly English. And he knew – for a fleeting moment as he tried to think what else to say – that he would love to kiss it, cigarettes or no cigarettes.

‘So what exactly are they searching for? Fando and Lis, I mean. ’

‘They aren’t exactly searching for anything. ’

‘Of course not. So what are they approximately searching for?’

That made her laugh. It was lovely, that laugh. Despite the cigarettes, her teeth were very white and the inside of her mouth coral pink. In contrast her skin was quite pale, and her hair – a curly cloud – straw-coloured. He would never have admitted it to anyone, but just being there at the table with her, watching her laugh, brought the beginnings of an awkward erection.

‘You’re so funny,’ she said, which, laughter being the great aphrodisiac, made the erection worse.

‘I suppose for fulfilment,’ James suggested.

‘What on earth do you mean, fulfilment? That’s a weasel word if there ever was one. I thought you scientists were meant to be precise. ’