‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. I finished my wine and we left.

Max was mostly silent on the walk back to the cottage, it was only me who spoke with enforced, drunken jolliness, desperate to keep the light mood of the afternoon afloat. I had never seen him so absorbed in his own thoughts and unresponsive to me. Eventually I stopped trying to make conversation.

‘Why did you do that stuff with the condensed milk company?’ he asked.

‘You know why,’ I said. ‘I’ve told you about it before. Those jobs pay the bills.’

‘You shouldn’t do them any more. It’s really clear that your writing is best when you actually believe what you’re saying.’

‘I always actually believe what I’m saying, otherwise I wouldn’t say it. I’m not that much of a sell-out.’

‘Like me?’

‘Max,’ I said, stopping on the empty, winding lane, lined with foxgloves. He stopped walking as well. ‘Do you want to talk about this or not? I’m happy to talk about your job, but please don’t say you don’t want to talk about it then make passive-aggressive digs at me.’

‘I’m not being passive-aggressive. I’m giving you constructive feedback.’

It was the first time I’d seen any sign of insecurity in him. For a moment, his carapace of cool masculinity had cracked. I saw him without his props. Without the big salary and the sports car, without the Americana on vinyl and the Bob Dylan CDs in his glove compartment, without his weathered knitwear and the desert boots caked in mud. The bricks of self had fallen, just for a few minutes, and all I could see was a nervous little boy who had been hiding underneath. I could forgive, just this once, his belligerence.

‘This nose,’ I said as we lay in bed that night. I dragged my finger along the hard curve of it. ‘It’s the most assertive nose I’ve ever seen. That nose has never been wrong about anything.’

‘I have my dad’s nose.’

‘Do you look like your dad? I’ve never seen a proper photo of him other than that one in your flat.’

‘I don’t think I have one,’ he said. ‘But yeah, I do look like him. A lot like him.’ He ran his fingers through his hair. ‘I once read Freud say that when two people have sex, there are at least six people in the room. The couple and both of their parents.’

‘What a thoroughly unenjoyable orgy.’

‘I know.’

‘Do you think that’s true?’

‘I think my dad is always going to be a missing piece for me, in every situation. No matter how much I talk or think about it, no matter how much I analyse it. It’s always going to torment me in a very quiet way.’

‘Boys and their dads,’ I said. ‘I don’t think there’s a parent–child dynamic that’s more potent.’

‘Yeah,’ he said, rubbing his head as if to iron out the uncomfortable creases of his thoughts.

‘Why did he leave your mum?’ I asked. ‘We don’t have to talk about it.’

‘He met someone else.’

‘How old were you?’

‘Two.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘It’s okay.’

‘How did your mum cope with it?’

‘Emotionally, she never really gave anything away. She just got on with it. Financially, it was tough. I remember, when I was eight, she gave me a fiver to get some milk from the shop in the village. I bought her a box of chocolates as a present, because I was aware she didn’t have a husband like the other mums, and when I got home and gave it to her she burst into tears. It was only recently she told me the reason she was crying was that was the last five-pound note she had to feed us for a week.’

‘God, Max. That’s a horrible memory, I’m sorry.’

‘I think that’s why I feel so wedded to a job I hate. Because I don’t ever want to worry about money like that.’

‘How old were you when you met your dad again?’

‘Nine. I came home and Mum told me he was waiting in the living room. We had nothing to say to each other, he didn’t know how to talk to me.’

‘What’s your relationship like now?’

‘We don’t have one. He still doesn’t know how to talk to me. He sent me an email for my birthday last year two months late, wishing me a happy thirtieth.’

‘Jesus.’

‘I worked out a long time ago that the best way to not be disappointed is to not give him a chance to disappoint me.’

‘Is he with the woman he left your mum for?’

‘No. He left her when she was pregnant.’

‘Has he been with anyone since?’

‘Yeah.’

‘How many?’

‘Lost count,’ he said.

‘Did he have more than one child after you?’

‘Yep.’

‘How many?’

‘Lost count,’ he said with a defeated laugh.

‘Do you worry you’re like your dad?’ I immediately regretted the question – it was goading and seemed to relate his experience back to me.

‘We’re all like our dads,’ he said. ‘Come on then, what ghosts are you bringing to the orgy?’

‘I don’t know, really. My parents’ relationship is very boring. I don’t think they’re soulmates, they’re so disconnected in so many ways, but they’re complementary to each other. And they’re best friends, they really have a good time together. Well, they used to. It’s hard to remember what their relationship was like before Dad got ill. His behaviour is so different now, obviously, but so is hers. I can’t remember her being this self-obsessed. And there must be a reason for it – but I can’t work out what it is. I think she is just pretending what’s happening isn’t happening. Or maybe she doesn’t want to care for Dad any more, I know how upsetting it must be. Maybe she just finds it too hard.’ Max had become completely quiet as I spoke. We had never talked about our families like this. ‘It was always Dad and me who were the closest – he was the one who I talked to the most when I was a teenager. He taught me how to drive. He taught me everything. Mum and I were never like those mums and daughters who are best friends. But I’ve never felt quite so distant from her as I do now. And that scares me because Dad’s not going to be here soon. I don’t know how soon, it could be years and years, but sooner than I thought. And it will just be me and her. That will be my whole family. And I don’t know how I’ll have any sort of relationship with her when he isn’t here. I think Dad is the only thing we have in common.’ My words hung above the bed. More silence. I couldn’t work out exactly when he’d fallen asleep.

We drove back to London on Monday morning in contented quiet. We had entered the stage of our relationship where not every journey had to be filled with conversation, where we weren’t greedily trying to eat each other up, as if we feared we had a use-by date. We knew we had time now. It stretched ahead of us endlessly like the tarmac of the motorway. My palm rested on his leg as he drove. Hot, thick sun poured over us, warming the leather of his car seats.

He dropped me off outside my flat. His car ignition gave a leonine roar as he drove away down my road. I stood on the doorstep to wave him off – romantic and corny, but the kind of gesture he appreciated. I blew him a kiss. He held his hand aloft, waving goodbye without looking back. His car turned left and he disappeared.

17

When I agreed to meet Jethro and Lola at the pub, I knew that I was in for quite an afternoon. Their continuous stream of social media posts, captioned with long declarations of love and littered with in-jokes, had foreshadowed this lunch. But I hadn’t anticipated quite how oxytocin-drunk the pair of them would be. When Jethro saw me, he opened his arms wide and embraced me for longer than I was comfortable. ‘Nina,’ he said, on a deep outward breath. ‘Nina, Nina. At last we meet. How long I have waited.’ The whole thing felt unnecessarily ceremonious, like I was the wise, elderly leader of a tribe and Lola had returned with a partner for approval. Lola was no better – every time Jethro said anything, even something as innocuous as ‘I live in Clerkenwell’, she would look to me with an expectant smile as if to say Isn’t he amazing?! and wouldn’t break my gaze until I gave her a grin or a nod to confirm that, yes, he really was amazing. The pair of them finished each other’s sentences so smoothly it felt choreographed and, on the rare occasions they interrupted each other, they’d touch hands and say: ‘No, you go, darling, I’m so sorry, I spoke over you. No, I insist, my love, you go first.’

They loved explaining things about each other to me: ‘Jethro doesn’t need much sleep whereas I, as you know, need nine hours’; ‘Lola is someone who very much carries the emotions of others’; ‘More and more, we are seriously considering a move to Mexico City.’ Lola kept finding ways to join us together with tenuous links, whether it was what food we ordered or what we both laughed at – she would turn to Jethro and say, ‘See? What did I say? Like twins, you two,’ and he would nod with knowing gravitas.