‘Actually, there are quite a few families with grown-up kids still living at home,’ I said.

‘Poor little posh kids,’ he sneered, and the look he cast me was unnervingly knowing. Knowing of something specific, like my intimacy with his girlfriend? Or generalized, the hardwired superiority of youth? He knew better, he just hadn’t yet had the chance to prove it to the world.

‘You’re not the only one, Kit, you know,’ I said, in a low voice.

‘The only one what?’

‘Suffering from the housing crisis. Some would say you’re doing pretty well. You’ve got a place to yourselves, you don’t have to share a kitchen and bathroom with strangers. There’s not that much to complain about.’

He blew smoke in my direction. ‘Okay, boomer.’

He had a way of defusing conflict, of making me laugh. ‘Gen X, thank you very much, snowflake.’

We stood for a minute listening to the music coming through the living-room window, the sixties hits playing on in spite of the breakdown of the group.

‘Great playlist,’ he said. ‘Who’s this again?’

‘The Zombies.’

‘Yeah, I’m liking all your sixties stuff. Music was definitely better in your day.’

‘You know I was born in 1971, right? And I wasn’t actually alive when these songs were out?’

‘I do have some basic numeracy,’ he scoffed. He lit a second cigarette, lifting his chin as he did. The song played on – It’s too late to say you’re sorry – and I ignored the quiver the words sent across my skin. ‘Want one?’ he offered.

‘Go on then.’ When you haven’t smoked for years – Clare and I had given up together on her fortieth birthday – the first hit is painful, like self-harm. Then again, inhaling fumes from the London roads is said to be equivalent to smoking ten a day. ‘I remember when ciggies were two quid,’ I said.

‘I fucking don’t want to know,’ Kit said. ‘Crap music, overpriced fags, extortionate rent. What other reasons do I have to slit my wrists?’

‘Climate change?’ I said, not without sympathy. Life was exciting for me – perilously so – but I didn’t envy the world Kit and Melia had inherited. Thank God Clare and I had no kids, no stake in the future.

As if to mark the sentiment, there was the distant blare of a vessel on the river, a reminder that the water was right there and would flow long after we’d left this city. In response – or so it seemed – a fox cried out from some hidden corner of the square, sharp as a tile-cutter.

‘Jamie,’ Kit said.

‘Yeah?’

‘Don’t do it, will you?’

My breath caught in my throat. ‘Do what?’

‘Take her side. Melia’s, I mean. I know Clare will, women always stick together, but you don’t need to fall for her drama.’

‘There are no sides to take,’ I said firmly, though raised voices behind the door announced Melia’s continued distress and plans for an immediate departure.

As she burst onto the doorstep, Kit and I moved to one side, making no eye contact.

‘Kit, you’d better walk her home,’ Clare said, a concession not to the three or four mean streets of St Mary’s that separated our houses so much as a criticism of Kit’s neglect of his girlfriend’s emotional needs.

‘Sure,’ he said, and we watched them leave, Melia stalking away in heeled boots, Kit keeping pace, the end of his cigarette burning orange by his side.

He made some attempt to touch her – put an arm around her perhaps – and her screech split the night: ‘Do NOT touch me!’ And then they were gone from the square and our surveillance.

‘That went well,’ Clare said, as we set about wedging wine glasses into the dishwasher and scraping leftover food into the bin.

‘Didn’t it?’

‘Why’s she so sensitive? And why does he have to be so insensitive? You know she thinks he’s screwing that woman on the boat.’

I was taken aback. ‘What woman? You mean Gretchen? I very much doubt it.’

Clare raised an eyebrow. ‘And yet you knew who I meant straightaway.’

‘Only because we don’t know any other women on the boat.’ Though suspecting another sleight of misdirection on Melia’s part, I was nervous of talk of infidelity, regardless of the participants, especially so soon after that exchange with Kit. What would Clare do if she found out about Melia and me? Grab a knife and slice my throat, or turn away, rocking with laughter? ‘I honestly think this is how they like to conduct their relationship. They enjoy tormenting each other,’ I said.

‘I agree. Probably this is how their parents behaved,’ Clare said. ‘They think it’s normal.’

Even with the advantage of sleeping with one of the subjects, I couldn’t match her psychological insight.

‘Don’t get me wrong, I like Kit, but I wonder if she might be better off with a different kind of guy. Someone who gives her what she craves.’

I gulped. ‘What does she crave?’

‘To live her dreams.’ Catching herself in a rare moment of sentimentality, Clare gave a self-deprecating chortle. ‘What she thinks are her dreams, I should say. Anyway, if they go on like this, something bad could happen.’

‘I was just thinking that,’ I agreed.

13

27 December 2019

It’s approaching 9.30 and our coffees are finished. Though I could get up and leave any time I choose, I have to admit there’s a rogue part of me that’s appreciating this opportunity to order my thoughts, to take my disjointed history with Melia and turn it into something more cohesive. I’ve warmed up, I suppose.

Still busy, I text Regan.

Parry collects up the cups and flattens them in one fist, placing them on the rough cardboard tray. It seems to me his fingers have the potential for precision, even cruelty – I imagine him plucking the legs from an insect. I look beyond him, scanning the banners in the space below us, marketing for a series of festive concerts by the London Philharmonic in the New Year, until he says, almost kindly, ‘What you have to remember, Jamie, is one person’s version of events is never the only one.’

Does he mean that Melia’s said something different about our affair? That’s hard to believe. Or is he referring then to this other witness they’ve got up their sleeve? Either way, I’m not delivering the easy solution to the mystery of Kit’s disappearance that they’d hoped for. I’m guilty of sleeping with his wife, I’ve admitted that, but they want more. They’re stuck.

‘In my experience, no two people ever remember things exactly the same way,’ I say, equably. ‘Sometimes you wouldn’t know it was the same event.’

‘Yes, of course,’ he agrees. ‘You must know that from previous incidents.’

‘What d’you mean?’ My brows rise so high I can feel my forehead corrugating. My injured thumb is starting to itch inside its dressing.

‘I mean, maybe now might be a good time to talk about what happened in July of last year.’

It’s a swerve of direction so violent, I feel whiplashed. What could possibly link my helping them with their inquiries involving my missing friend with a mental health episode suffered a year and a half ago among total strangers? Is this what he discovered in his prolonged coffee run? Did it come up on the police database or was it the result of a quick google? Certainly, there is no reason for Melia to have mentioned it. I hold his gaze, defensive, almost proud; let him know I’m unimpressed with these tactics. They obviously don’t realize yet that they can trip me up a hundred times and it won’t change the fact that I have not harmed Kit.