Phil Ockerman falls for Bertha Strunk at a tango lesson in a church crypt in Clerkenwell. ‘Is Bertha’s trunk anything like Pandora’s box?’ he wonders. Each recently separated, both their Suns are squared by Neptune. Bertha is also the mirror image of seventeenth-century Venetian singer Barbara Strozzi (who Phil just happens to adore), to the point where Phil is no longer sure which is which.

On their first night together, Phil and ‘Barbara’ watch “The Rainmaker”, a tale of battered wifery and the murder of an ex-husband. It turns out that Barbara’s choice of film was not entirely innocent, and Phil suddenly finds himself carrying around a potential murder weapon.

Navigating the various lines of the London Underground, this intriguing book dances its way through a world of infidelity, writer’s block, museums, fake eyeballs and baseball bats.