“I have to say, Ivan, that of the many things you are to me, 'charity fuck' is not one of them,” she says, earnestly, shining guileless sincerity from every pore. If she wasn't slightly perverse in her displays of affection, he'd no longer know what to do with himself, probably. “Probably,” with studied nonchalance, “because of how I love you.”

She could probably have come up with a less romantic way of pipping him at the post with the l word, but she'd have had to put real thought into it.