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already, in case you were worried.”

      “But I don’t want you to feel crap, do I? I don’t want to feel crap. I don’t want to think of you leaving here tonight and going to bed bare-arsed with another fella. I don’t want to and I don’t have to and I won’t.”

      Irina had started to cry, but Ramsey made a show of hardness, as if her tears were a gambit. “If I was a bird, I’d be fancied a right mug. Letting some more or less married bloke mess about with me during the day. But I’m a bloke, so instead I’m a Jack the Lad. Hand in the knickers, and it costing me no more than the odd chardonnay.

      “That’s the way your man in the street thinks, but it’s not the way I think, darling. I think I’m a right mug. You slink in here and rub up against my trousers like a cat itching her backside on a post, and then it’s, Blimey, look at the time! And you nip out the door again—leaving me with the post. I got no moral objection to self-abuse, but it’s well short of a proper good time.”

      “You shouldn’t talk about us like that,” she sniffled. “Or me like that. It’s ugly.”

      “We been making it ugly! Bugger it, woman!” Ramsey socked a fist into his opposite palm. “I want to fuck you!”

      Despite her miserable curl at the far end of the sofa, Irina felt a twinge, as if he had her on a string, and could tug at the tackle between her legs like a toy on wheels. Thus her pride at his declaration was dovetailed by resentment. It was all very exhilarating to have conceived a consuming infatuation against the placid backdrop of her reserved relationship with Lawrence. But there was no opting out; she could not nibble at sexual obsession when it suited her. The craving was constant, and with Ramsey now removed by three feet even the brief deprivation was unbearable. “I want to fuck you, too,” she mumbled morosely.

      “You treat me like a rent boy! It’s been long enough. You rubbish me, and you rubbish us. You rubbish yourself. If you’re right and Lawrence hasn’t twigged yet, you can nip back to your happy home and stay. Or you can get your bum into my bed and stay. You cannot have him and me both. ’Cause I am shattered. I am half demented. Waiting for you to show tonight, I couldn’t pot the colours on their spots, and I could pot the colours on their spots standing on a fruit crate when I was seven.”

      “Three months may seem like an eternity to you, but I’ve nearly ten years with Lawrence at stake here. I have to be sure of myself. There’d be no going back.”

      “There’s never no going back! In snooker, you learn the hard way that every shot is for keeps. I got no time for prats who hair-tear about Oi, if only I’d not used quite so deep a screw on the blue. Well, you didn’t. You potted the blue, or you didn’t. You’re on the next red, or you’re not. You live with it. You make the best call you can in the moment, and then you deal with the consequences. Right now, it’s your visit. You’re in amongst the balls. You got to decide whether to go for the pink or the black, full stop.”

      “Is Lawrence the pink? Because I don’t think he’d appreciate the colour.”

      Ramsey looked unamused.

      “Sorry,” she continued with a nervous smile, “it’s just, Reservoir Dogs is one of his favourite movies, and there’s this scene where Steve Buscemi whines about why does he have to be ‘Mr. Pink’ … Oh, never mind.”

      “I’m playing the Grand Prix next month,” said Ramsey levelly. “I got to get tournament ready, and I got to be able to concentrate. In the best of all possible worlds, I’d ask you to come with me to Bournemouth. But that’s obviously a nonstarter.”

      “Oh, but I would love to—”

      “I mayn’t have made world champion,” he ploughed on, “but I been in six championship finals, and got an MBE from the Queen. That mayn’t mean much to a Septic Tank”—he had taught her Cockney rhyming slang for Yank—“but it does mean something to me. I won’t be treated like a toy by a bird who’s snug as a bug with another bloke but needs a bit of buzz. And I won’t play in a bent match. I’d never have played a single frame if I knew from the off that the trophy was pledged to another fella.”

      The monologue had all the earmarks of a rehearsed speech. But Irina was starting to get a feel for Ramsey, and she didn’t think so. He was a performer, and his game was the soul of spontaneity. This show had taken an improvisational turn at her imprudent outburst about betraying “the kindest man in her life”—though her more considerable imprudence may have been impugning the paramount importance of snooker. Impetuously, he had gone with the turn and kept going. His voice sounded measured; the discussion itself was out of control. She could already sense where this was leading, and her cheeks drained. It was all she could do to keep from leaping across the sofa to clap a hand on his mouth.

      “I don’t want to see you again before the Grand Prix,” he said. “And that’d be no love notes neither, nor blubbing on the blower. When I come back to London, I only want you to rock up on my doorstep if you told Lawrence you’re in love with me, and him and you are finished.”

      If Ramsey was being melodramatic and had had a fair bit to drink, his it’s-him-or-me ultimatum made unpleasantly good sense. Yet he couldn’t resist taking his levelheaded proposal that one step further that would make it hasty, foolhardy, and scandalously premature: “And that ain’t all, ducky. When you leave Lawrence, if you leave Lawrence, you don’t tuck in upstairs as my in-house personal slag. You marry me. Got that? You marry me, and toot-sweet. At forty-seven, I got no use for long engagements.”

      As proposals go, this one was less bended-knee woo than assault. His delivery had been cruel, his clear intention to make what was already a terrible choice only the more stark. There would be no “trial separation” from Lawrence, no sampling of Ramsey’s wares like one of those small squares of Cheshire at Borough Market with no obligation to buy. On the other hand, no man had ever asked Irina to marry him before, in any tone of voice. His furious demand, flung at her from three feet like a wet rag, prickled the back of her neck.

      “Ramsey—I didn’t even marry Lawrence, after nearly ten years.”

       “I rest my case.”

      On return to the flat, Irina made little effort to disguise the fact that she’d been crying. Since it was past midnight in a town with cosmopolitan pretensions but provincial transport, the tube was shut. Flaunting the coldness of his newfound absolutism, Ramsey hadn’t rung her a cab, but had abandoned her on his steps to make her way home however she saw fit. The handshake at the door was the limit, instigating such a torrent of sobs on her flight from his house that when she finally flagged down a taxi on Grove Road the cabbie had to ask her to repeat the address three times.

      Ramsey was not the only one inclined to make a show of his indifference. Failing to comment on her puffy red eyes, Lawrence said stiffly in the living room, “It’s late.”

      “I missed the tube. Took forever to find a taxi.”

      “You, spring for a cab? Since when do you not look at your watch every five minutes to make sure you can catch the last train?”

      “Time got away from me. It’s a Friday night, and the minicabs were all booked up, so I had to wait.” As long as she was lying, she might as well go all the way, and disguise the fact that she had hailed one of those exorbitant black taxis off the street.

      “Why didn’t you call to let me know you’d be so late? I might be worried.” He didn’t sound worried. He sounded as if he’d have gladly paid a hoodlum to biff her over the head on the way home.

      “Finding a working pay phone would have delayed me even longer.” Her delivery was fatigued, and her heart wasn’t in this.

      “If you rang a minicab,” said Lawrence, “you’d already found a working pay phone. And that’s assuming that Betsy didn’t have her

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