‘Ah, yes.’

‘I have something you can cover them with that will let the air get to them.’

‘You do?’

‘Yes,’ I said. He smiled and turned the key in the door. I turned to Lola; her face was aghast.

‘What. Was that?’

‘He’s okay.’

‘The possible-murderer?’

‘He’s not a murderer, he’s a depressed man who has bought knives to take up the art of charcuterie to distract him from his broken heart and remind him of home.’

‘How do you know?’

‘We talked, had it out and came to a truce.’

‘How?’

‘We fucked.’

‘Very funny.’

‘I’m actually being serious.’ Lola’s mouth hung open in shock and her drunken, dancing eyes came into focus. ‘He came over to confront me about the stolen packages, I confessed and we ended up having sex in the kitchen.’ The cavern of her mouth widened. ‘I know.’

‘Will you do it again?’

‘No, no. It was a one-time thing.’

‘Do you fancy him?’

‘I don’t know. I did, a lot, when it was happening. I think I needed to have sex with someone who couldn’t disappear. We live in the same house. We share an electricity meter. I can basically hear his heartbeat through the floor.’

Lola thought on this, removing another cigarette. ‘Lush,’ she concluded sadly.

We sat in drunken exhaustion – a mostly silent cycle of pouring, drinking and smoking.

‘I have got something new for the Schadenfreude Shelf,’ Lola said. ‘And it’s the best one yet.’

‘You say that every time.’

‘No, trust me, this one really is the best one yet. I heard it a while back and I’ve actually been saving it up for our lowest low.’

‘I don’t think other people’s misery is going to do anything except make me feel more miserable.’

‘Why don’t you try it?’

‘Okay.’

‘Okay, so,’ she said, bringing her feet up to her chair so she sat cross-legged like an excitable teenager during a secret-swapping session. ‘Do you remember my friend Camille?’

‘Yes.’

‘So, not Camille, but –’

‘Don’t believe it, the source has already been weakened.’

‘We can call her right now for clarification.’

‘I’m not calling your friend Camille.’

‘So, Camille’s friend Emma moved to California. And in the first month she’s there, she decides she wants to take ayahuasca.’

‘What’s ayahuasca?’

‘It’s a psychoactive drug that’s administered by a shaman and apparently it’s like doing ten years’ therapy in one night.’

‘Right.’ It worried me how fluent I had become in Lola-babble.

‘So, she’s at this ceremony in Joshua Tree with a bunch of other strangers and they all take the ayahuasca. Emma goes on this crazy emotional trip, like she’s gone back in time, and she heals all these awful rifts between her and her mother. She comes out the other side and stands in the desert, sand under her feet and stars over her head.’

‘All right, get on with it.’

‘And she realizes she’s at total peace for the first time in her life. Then – a man is next to her. This other guy who has taken it too. He holds his hand out to her and she takes it. They say nothing to each other, but she knows she’s just met the love of her life.’

‘Lola, this story is not true.’

‘Now – wait a minute. So. They go back to LA, where he also lives, and they spend the weekend together. She is happier than she’s ever been – she has never felt so understood by another human. He moves into her apartment. They have three blissful months together.’

‘Okay.’

‘Then – something happens. This guy starts to actually really annoy her. They start having all these fights about things. She says to him: “I think this might not be right.” He says: “We just have to go back to the desert to take more ayahuasca.”’

‘So it was like a long, low-level hallucination?’

‘Precisely. So she says, no, take your stuff, leave my apartment, and he does. Then, about a week later, there’s this horrific smell everywhere. In every room, she can’t escape it.’

‘Oh no.’

‘She gets cleaners round – they deep-clean the whole place, the smell doesn’t go. After a month of living in hell, she finally traces where it’s coming from.’

‘Where?’

‘He had dismantled the air-conditioning unit, stuffed it with raw prawns, then screwed it back up. The smell dispersed with the airflow.’

‘Oh my God.’ I sat with the magnitude of this anecdotal finale for a minute. ‘That’s a really, really good addition to the Schadenfreude Shelf, Lola. Our worst break-up will never be as bad as that.’

‘What would you have done? If you had been her?’ she asked.

I swallowed the last of the sickly sweet coffee liqueur. ‘I think I might have gone back to the desert,’ I said. ‘And taken more.’

‘But then it would have all been a lie.’

‘Think about Demetrius and Helena.’

‘Were we at uni with them?’

‘In A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The happy ending is about two couples who are all in love with the right person. But Demetrius only loves Helena because he’s under the cast of an earlier spell.’

‘Is that really the ending?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Why?’

‘There are different theories. Probably because Shakespeare needed to resolve everything, so the story could follow the rules of what made a comedy. It was really hard to explain it to the kids when I taught it – they found an illusion so impossible to accept as a happy ending. They always used to ask me if I thought that Demetrius stayed in love with Helena after the play ended.’

‘Do you think he did?’

‘The question isn’t whether he stayed in love, it’s whether he woke up,’ I said.

Lola looked out on to my road, the street lamp bathing her face in amber light, the amber light that had illuminated these late-night scenes of our friendship for so many years. She picked up my phone, unlocked it and went into the app store. The Linx logo appeared with an option to download it.

‘I hope he didn’t wake up,’ she said. She placed the phone in the palm of my hand and the screen shone with bright uncertainty.

Epilogue

It is clear-skied when I wake up on the 3rd of August. It is the kind of weather that reminds me of childhood – of ladybirds on freckled arms and strawberry ice cream in the park. I know there must have been white-skied and drizzly days in my early years, but I can never seem to remember any of them. I brush my teeth and wash my face and, for the sake of tradition if not historical accuracy, play ‘The Edge of Heaven’ from the living-room speakers. It really is the best song to dance to.

I go for a walk around my neighbourhood, stepping over kebab-shop debris from the late-night moveable feasts. I walk past the flaking red-painted front of The Institution which, in daylight, looks like a kids’ party entertainer without its costume. I do my preferred circuit of Hampstead Heath and pick up a flat white on the way home (double shot, full-fat milk).

Angelo’s leaving as I arrive. We exchange pleasantries, both smoke a cigarette in the sun, and I tell him it’s my thirty-third birthday. He informs me I’m the same age as Jesus was when he died and asks what I plan to do to rival his achievements. I tell him I am sure I can save mankind in the next year. Or if not, I’ll definitely donate to food banks more.

In the mid-afternoon, I head to Albyn Square. I wanted a small afternoon picnic to celebrate this year and couldn’t think of anywhere lovelier than the road of my first home. I take a rug, some fold-out chairs and a cool box of wine and food. The guest list is just seven: Katherine, Mark, Lola, Joe, Lucy, Mum and Dad.

Katherine and Mark arrive first, Freddie on Katherine’s hip, Olive holding Mark’s hand, no one complaining about how long it took to get to East London, even though I know that’s what they’ve been talking about on the train journey. I asked everyone to bring their favourite snack from childhood as research for the final chapter of my new book. Kat brings salt-and-vinegar chipsticks, Mark brings Scotch eggs.