Like this, with his arms around me and my lips against his jaw and the wine nudging me towards my worst ideas, I said, ‘You should know that I still think about us when I masturbate.’

He took my shoulders and held me at arm’s length, and I smiled stupidly. He was three-headed, and each head was shaking. Cerberus in disapproval.

‘I’ll always be heartbroken about what happened to you,’ JP said. ‘But don’t do this, Lex. Don’t do it.’

The second time I met JP’s mother, it was Christmastime, and the week before he left me.

Christmas had invaded JP’s childhood home. His mother had a real Christmas tree, which looked like it belonged in a bigger house; you got a faceful of pine on the way to the kitchen. It was laden with stringy tinsel and glittering baubles. There was a singing, sensor-operated Father Christmas in the kitchen, which startled me each time I walked past. She had purchased a stuffed elf, the kind that parents relocate while their children are asleep. ‘It’s an Elf on the Shelf,’ she said. ‘But he’s been all over. In the oven. In the washing machine. On the TV.’

I thought of her at bedtime, carrying the elf through the rooms of the house.

‘Who knows,’ she said, ‘where he’ll be tonight.’

‘Who knows,’ JP said. He had bought the Financial Times at a service station on the way, and he was working through it, word by word.

‘You never could get him to believe in Christmas,’ JP’s mother said to me. ‘And I did try. He was five years old – four or five – when he started questioning the logic, you see. “But he can’t reach all of the houses in the world.” I tried some stories, but they didn’t convince him. And a year later I was receiving a list of demands for his stocking.’

‘You should have been more convincing, then,’ JP said.

‘Tell me about your Christmases, Lex,’ JP’s mother said.

That night, in a small, floral guest bed, JP pinned his knees to my shoulders and choked me. For five seconds – ten seconds – more. His mother still pottering in the kitchen below us, preparing tomorrow’s food. Relocating her fucking elf. Through the darkness, there was something different in JP’s face, something passive and devoid of pleasure, and I signalled for him to stop.

‘But you like it.’

‘Yes. But not like that.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like you’re angry.’

That was Christmas Eve. On Christmas Day, before JP was awake, I went for a long, cold run through the town, waiting for the moment when the exhaustion of it erased everything else. Most of the houses were dark, but there were lights on in a few bedrooms. Fairy lights tracing the windows and doors.

We opened our presents with mugs of tea, JP’s mother in her dressing gown. She gave me a Christmas jumper and a book on meditation. ‘It’s changed my life,’ she said.

‘Like colouring books for adults?’ JP said. ‘Like Zumba?’

They argued over dinner, too. We pulled crackers and wore the thin, obligatory hats. I ate quietly, watching my food and monitoring the contents of the side plates. Condensation thickened across the windows, sealing us in. JP was talking of our family – the family we would have together.

‘You see it in the people who’ve lived in London their whole lives,’ he said. ‘People whom Lex and I know. It’s this – this confidence, I suppose. You grow up surrounded by culture, by sport, by commerce. None of it comes as a surprise. It’s the only place we’d want to have children, I think.’

‘Right in the centre? Where you live now?’

‘Right in the centre.’

‘I don’t know why you’d do that. It’s inconceivable. Just the two of you, without any family around. With the fumes, and all of those people.’

‘As opposed to here? In a shithole?’

‘JP,’ I said.

‘I would advise against having children,’ JP’s mother said. ‘If this is the kind of thanks that you get.’

‘Actually,’ I said. ‘That’s already decided.’

JP stopped drinking. We looked at one another. He stood up so quickly that his chair teetered, and fell to the floor. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, still watching me. His mother giggled.

‘Don’t worry about him,’ she said. ‘He always knew how to throw a strop.’

‘Thank you again,’ I said. ‘It was a great dinner.’

She smiled. ‘It’s a thing worth learning,’ she said. She was playing with the keyring from her cracker, dangling it from a finger. I was sure that she would keep it.

‘I should check on him,’ I said.

I opened the sliding doors to join him in the garden. A little island of concrete, encircled by wet grass. We stood together on the paving stones, neither of us dressed for the weather. I removed my cracker hat. The sky was a murky white, like day-old snow. In an hour it would be dark. I had the sense of Sunday evening, or the journey back from the airport after a holiday. The feeling of things coming to an end.

‘Why would you say that?’ he said. ‘Where did that come from, Lex?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘She just – you were being cruel to her.’

‘She says stupid things. What do you expect?’