With excited disregard for the state of play between them, Colin immediately set about recounting the little drama in the street below. She stood at the balcony wall, watching the sunset while he spoke. She did not shift her gaze when he gestured towards the young men at their table, but she nodded faintly. Colin could not reproduce the vague misunderstandings that constituted, according to him, the main interest of the story. Instead, he heard himself exaggerate its small pathos into vaudeville, perhaps in an attempt to gain Mary’s full attention. He described the elderly gentleman as ‘incredibly old and feeble’, his wife was ‘batty beyond belief’, the men at the table were ‘bovine morons’, and he made the husband give out ‘an incredible roar of fury’. In fact the word ‘incredible’ suggested itself to him at every turn, perhaps because he feared that Mary did not believe him, or because he did not believe himself. When he finished, Mary made a short’mm’ sound through a half smile.

- Ian McEwan, The Comfort of Strangers : 6