All lives are nothing more than the chronicle of countless stinging might-have-beens that continue to haunt us. In the scorching heat, a hundred people wait to be selected as jurors. Paul, a lawyer reading Wall Street Journal. Catherine, a psychiatrist reading Wuthering Heights. So, begins a whirlwind flirtation over cappuccinos in Manhattan and gallery trips to Chelsea. Paul and Catherine, strike up a conversation and leap to judgements. Catherine thinks she could read him like a book, Wall Street, Park Avenue, Ivy League – arrogant self-satisfied, clearly prejudiced and knows it too. With lawyerly precision, Paul sums her up as “definitely lefty”. Their banter and observations – legal strategies, the taste of coriander , how to wear socks – suggests an attraction. Food does the rest. On lunch breaks they visit a Chinese restaurant, the kind of place neither of their spouses would choose, and eat fried dumplings. At an Italian café they discuss their pasts, presents and a shared love of Naples over expressos and cornetti. A barista sweet talks them and the sun continues to shine. “They sound like a pair of old-school safe-crackers synchronising watches before blowing up the wall to the bank vault”. The titular room is a make-believe space overlooking the Bay of Naples, inspired by Paul’s visits to a Neapolitan hotel and a painting discovered by the duo in a SoHo gallery. It becomes fabulous retreat for their imagined future. They escape into the illusion of an Italian getaway, a dance of polite flirtation between two early-stage pensioners over one heat-wave week to be chosen or dismissed from the roster of trials. Their feelings quickly evolve into something deeper, something – as mature adults with lives of their own – Paul and Catherine must carry on in secret with the understanding that anything more than a causal crush is out of the question.

Room on the Sea is a fantasy within a fantasy with a last chance liaison underpinned by daydreams of the Mediterranean. 

Room on the Sea by André Aciman, Faber £12.99, 176 pages.