Ideal date: 

It’s 2pm on a drizzly February afternoon. You take me to Mariage Frères in Convent Garden for afternoon tea. We browse the extensive tea menu and I take an inordinately long time to choose - some would find this frustrating but because I’m so pretty you find it endearing. I coquettishly suggest that you order my second choice, a robust and challenging blend that I’d like to try but not commit to a whole pot of - you are charmed and comply. The teas arrive - fortunately all the teas at Mariage Frères are of exceptional quality so both my choices are exquisite. After making delightful small talk for some time, you suggest going to an obscure little bookstore in Mayfair - when we arrive it transpires that you are in fact old friends with the owner, who invites us out back and offers us more tea, which we feel would be impolite to refuse. 

Amongst the shipment of old and rare books that we look through together, we find a real gem - a beautifully illustrated copy of the Kama Sutra dating from the 18th century! It’s outrageously expensive but you buy it for me without hesitation, knowing both that you are contributing to what will one day be an Esteemed Collection, and also that this is a text will afford us much entertainment of a practical nature.

After dinner and the opera, you take me back to your rooms at the Langham, where we make sweet sweet love to a recording of Scriabin’s Poème de l'extase.

In the morning you say, “I can’t bear to part, let’s go to Paris for the weekend.” 

Paris is a dream: pastel coloured macarons, dainty little poodles, gratifyingly obnoxious waiters. As the days draw on, however, I become aware of a simmering background unease. To your own surprise, and dismay, your feelings for me threaten to overcome you, having grown wild and consuming.

Upon returning to London, things come to a head. You propose marriage, and I decline. I explain that, just like Violetta in La Traviata, I too must be sempre libre. You proceed to outline the plot of the opera to me, highlighting the fact that my example is self-defeating. 

“You are so goddamn pedantic”, I cry, throwing a Lalique crystal vase across the room, where it shatters in the marble fireplace. “This is why we can’t be together!” 

I storm out, back to my own apartment, slamming the door behind me. 

In the end you bequeath me a lifelong annual stipend of several hundred thousand pounds, for my personal maintenance, but also to establish and develop a centre for artistic residencies in Italy. As the years go by, I keep my distance out of respect for your new wife, a lovely little blonde thing, although I regularly update you with news of ongoing projects at the palazzo: events, recordings, publications. Our relationship settles into one of detached but affectionate mutual esteem.

The establishment in Italy thrives; a portrait of you hangs in the dining hall and visitors on the obligatory welcome tour are invited to gaze up at your handsome, wealthy features. 

“Our principle benefactor”, I proclaim. “A great and generous man.”