If he’s putting his arm around the back of her seat, I don’t mind if it reaches me too. And as if he’s heard me think this, or maybe because I might have moved closer to him without even knowing it, his arm drops on my shoulder, and his hand is now rubbing my neck with tenuous, absentminded motions that could easily have mistaken me at first for the leather edge of the sofa. It’s as though he wishes to assuage all my worries about Maud and at the same time stir something else in me, and I can’t tell which it is, and I like not knowing, and I don’t want him to stop, and I lean my head forward
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