Rain began to slide down the window in diagonal lines.

‘I don’t know,’ I said, carefully. ‘I think you’d have to ask her yourself – or get Melia to. Could you ask work for an advance? You can’t be the first employee they’ve had who needs a bit of help.’

He lost his patience. ‘You’re the one who just offered to help! Look, forget it.’ And he didn’t look at me again, fingers rapping on his thigh in a ceaseless rhythm, as if counting down to the moment this torture would end. At last, well before his stop, he leapt up and made for the door, the first to disembark. Below, the river was liquid mud, stippled with rain, its lethal eddies and currents visible on the surface like feeding mouths, and I saw Kit glance down at it with trepidation. Hard to believe anything could survive in it for more than a few seconds, I thought, and I willed him to cross the gangway with greater care than usual.

I thought hard about whether to report his request to Clare, but after that row in France I ruled against drawing further attention to her financial might and my utter powerlessness. I could no longer deny my resentment, but I owed her a period of co-operation and would not involve her in this.

Instead, I raised it with Melia.

‘I’m worried about him. He feels out of control. And he must be skating on thin ice at work – the last thing he needs is to lose his job.’

She exhaled heavily, her nostrils flaring. ‘I’ll talk to him.’

*

The season was turning, daylight hours shrunken and precious, and the spokes of the Eye glowed neon against the darkening sky, delicate as harp strings. In the café, the young people in their pricey trainers and their zero-gravity activewear added jackets befitting a jaunt to the Lake District, not Waterloo. But, of course, we were close to one of the busiest railway stations in Europe. These people, they weren’t all wage slaves, eschewing annual leave, denying themselves vitamin D; many, perhaps fifty per cent, simply secured their coffees with our special biodegradable lids and escaped to wherever they chose. I envied them.

According to Regan, there had now been more than a hundred violent killings in London so far this year. ‘The bloodlust in the capital shows no sign of relenting,’ she read aloud from her Metro, in earshot of bemused customers.

It was an uneasy time, for sure, but at least Melia seemed to have cajoled Kit into getting his work attendance back on track, even if he did continue with his nervous roving on the boat – he couldn’t stay in his seat for longer than five minutes.

One morning, when he disappeared to the deck for a second cigarette in half an hour, I broached my concerns with Steve. ‘Do you think Kit might have an addiction issue?’

Frowning, Steve peered at me through the powerful lenses of his glasses. ‘Leave it out, Jamie.’

‘I’m serious. As someone who’s, you know, struggled in the past, I know how it feels when people don’t step up to help. Everyone assumes someone else is doing it.’

‘You had a phobia, mate. Kit’s just letting off steam now and then.’

As he returned to his phone, I took the easy option. ‘Maybe you’re right.’

‘I am. Live and let live, yeah?’

Another time, on the evening boat, I observed an interaction that should have worried me but in fact had the opposite effect. Kit was at the bar getting in the beers, and Gretchen had gone to the loo. On her return, she approached Kit at the bar and murmured something in his ear. A change of order, I supposed, but then she touched his hand. It wasn’t erotic, like the way Melia touched me, but sisterly, as if reassuring him there was closeness in his life, kinship. I watched as he acknowledged it, a look on his face I found impossible to read, just a scrawl of general human despair. Though Gretchen waited, and the lump of his Adam’s apple moved as he cleared his throat, no words were spoken.

I pretended not to notice, of course.

23

November 2019

I didn’t know it at the time, but the double date Clare and I had with the Ropers soon after would be our last. It was early November, several days into a run of dreary and oppressive weather, and we hadn’t been in Mariners half an hour before I realized Kit’s mood was going to make the evening untenable. Whatever phase of drug abuse it represented – I suspected involuntary withdrawal – he was irritable, unrestrained, lucid to the point of withering.

And predictable by then, so very predictable. Melia had joined us directly from showing a rental on Prospect Square to a re-lo consultant who represented a family from Switzerland and she was expressing amazement at the annual running costs, when Kit spoke rudely over her: ‘Oh, the kind of people who live there wouldn’t even notice.’

‘Why wouldn’t they?’ Clare asked, accepting a challenge that by now provoked little more than an eye roll from me. ‘Isn’t it possible “the kind of people” living there are actually working their arses off to pay those bills? Fretting about keeping their heads above water like the rest of the world?’

‘Of course,’ Melia said, placatingly, but Kit was not about to concede so easily.

‘So it was all hard work, was it, Clare? You paid for that massive house by working your arse off?’

She glared at him. ‘Yes.’ It was unfortunate that she glanced at me then and caught the doubtful look on my face. I sucked in my breath. This was just the sort of territory I had always dreaded us entering, confidences that could only have come from me being recirculated between the two couples as common knowledge, and it seemed incredible it had taken this long to happen.

‘Give us a break,’ Kit said, sneering. ‘You make out you’re this self-made businesswoman, but we all know your house was bought for you by your parents.’

‘It’s none of your business,’ Clare snapped, casting me an outraged look. I could only hope she presumed I’d told Kit directly, not Melia.

‘Kit,’ Melia warned, and I could read the message she hoped to transmit to him: Stop. Remember the wedding champagne. Remember I work for her company.

Remember your fucking manners, was what I thought. Clare had always been generous to him, she didn’t deserve this takedown. ‘Don’t speak to her like that,’ I said, but I could tell it was a beat too late for Clare’s liking.

‘Of course you’re happy about it, Jamie,’ Kit scoffed. ‘You’re like those grown-up kids on your square, living for free, someone else paying the bills. We’d all like to be a glorified lodger like you.’

‘I am not living for free,’ I protested, feeling true dislike for him, but Clare lifted a hand.

‘For goodness’ sake, why does everything have to be about money with you lot?’

You lot. She meant me, too, all three of us, and I registered in myself a complicated blend of insult, fear and release at the change of status.

‘Only someone with money would say that,’ Kit pointed out, correctly, and when Clare spoke again her tone was less hectoring.

‘Okay, so it’s not fair, but we all know life isn’t fair.’

‘No, it’s a precious gift,’ Kit sneered. ‘We should just be grateful to be alive, right? To be allowed to buy the chosen ones a drink?’

‘Kit,’ Melia said again. ‘Clare’s the one who’s always buying us drinks. You’re being really rude.’