I first came to Josephine Hart’s novel by its 1992 film adaptation by Louis Malle. My verdict is that Damage is not the sort of book one places beside Anna Karenina and feels obliged to reckon with — very few books are. It is, rather, the exactly sort of book one reaches for at 11PM when the spirit is low, and one wants something of respectable quality yet has no capacity for anything too demanding.

Miss Hart’s characters are sketches rather than portraits — she has not the patience for the slow accumulation of detail that another writer would have insisted upon — but she has the gift for delivering a single devastating sentence. Always finely tuned, and always at the right time in the depiction of a desperate, forbidden romance. Indeed I finished this book remembering her observations and aphorisms. It is a narrow but real gift, which Lady Saatchi — as she became in her other life in high society — wielded with admirable skill.

And so I did, in the room in which I had first lain with her. Is it important which way I tried to take her? Which entrance? And whether with tongue or hand or penis? Did she lie or stand? Was her back to me or to the wall? Were her hands free or bound? Did she see my face or not? Tales of ecstasy are endless tales of failure. For always comes separation. And the journey towards the essential, fleeting unity begins again.

She was the split-second experience that changes everything; the car smash; the letter we shouldn’t have opened; the lump in the breast or groin; the blinding flash. On my well-ordered stage-set the lights were up, and maybe at last I was waiting in the wings.