Intimacy, as we have seen with Bob and Charlotte, is closely tied to subtlety. John Ruskin, writing in the context of art, speaks of the small but highly significant details in paintings: “that the minutest portion of a great composition is helpful to the whole” calling this “the task of the least” (1869: ch. 2, esp. §1). I experienced something analogous to this on a brief trip to Venice. In the daytime I felt I was stuck in the middle of a Canaletto painting. The vivid brilliance coming at me was hard to take in. I was awed but not moved. Yet when I was on the water taxi going home from dinner, the city entered me more subtly by circuitous routes: the slopping sound of paddle in water, the candlelight in the houses. I was more profoundly affected by an indirect approach.

This is an important feature of intimacy in general. The fragility of the bond often requires a subtlety of interaction, and often something to contrast it against and thus create that sense of conspiracy. One evening Bob and Charlotte go out into Tokyo with her friends. While singing karaoke, Bob is persuaded to sing Bryan Ferry's “More Than This” and through the hilarity we can see those slight shifts of expression – a flicker, a tightening, a half-smile – that suggest a world of melancholy and desire below the surface.