Nothing. Feeling foolish, I tuck my phone in my pocket and check out the crew. I don’t recognize any of them from that night service a week ago and, even if I did, it would hardly be advisable to start quizzing them about what the police had asked, whether the security footage was formally seized with the intention of being used as evidence in a prosecution. The thought causes me to groan loudly and Pink Ends glances over her shoulder. Her eye lingers, not with sympathy or even curiosity, but with caution, as if she thinks I might be unstable. I smile, but it probably makes things worse, and when we slow to approach the next stop, she moves to a different seat.

I straighten my mind, scan for loose ends. I leave a message for my father: ‘I’m so sorry, Dad, but I’m going to have to bail on tomorrow night. The thing is, Clare and I are going through a rough patch at the moment and she doesn’t really want house guests, not even family.’ I feel like a heel, both for letting him down and for blaming Clare for it. Crap behaviour begets crap behaviour, it would seem.

‘Jamie, you all right?’

It’s Steve – God, have we reached North Greenwich already? – and I remember my text to him, the idiocy of which has been eclipsed by more pressing concerns. With the rest of my row free, I have no hope of avoiding a confab with him.

‘You’re in late, as well?’

‘I overslept.’ He licks a spot of toothpaste from the corner of his mouth. ‘What the fuck was that text all about on Saturday?’

‘Sorry, I’d been drinking, lost my mind a bit about this Kit situation. Someone’s been talking bollocks to the police, saying I’m involved.’

He removes his glasses and wipes them clean, turning large blind eyes towards me. ‘Yeah, well, you must know I would never dob a mate in, even if I did think he’d done something dodgy.’ He puts his glasses back on and seems to notice the marks on my face for the first time. I watch him decide not to ask. ‘What’s the latest, then? You don’t think he’s just gone off somewhere without telling Melia?’

‘I hope that’s what it is,’ I agree. Already, I’m sensing there’s comfort to be gained from this discussion. Steve’s instincts are in sync with those I first presented to Parry and Merchison: Kit’s gone AWOL because it’s the kind of thing he does.

Steve frowns. ‘He might not even know there’s been all this drama. Why’s there nothing about it online? If he saw a news report, he’d realize people are worried and he’d get in touch with her. Or someone.’

‘If he’s online,’ I point out. ‘His phone is out of service – all my texts are coming back undelivered.’

‘Yeah, mine as well.’

I lower my voice. ‘Between you and me, I think the police think it might be to do with some drugs dispute. Did Kit say anything to you about being in that kind of trouble?’

‘Drugs?’ Uncertain emotions pass across his face. He’s remembering, perhaps, my half-hearted proposal of an intervention a few weeks ago, his own cavalier dismissal of the notion that Kit had a problem. Live and let live sounds like bad advice now. ‘Well, I knew he was strapped for cash, but I didn’t get the impression he was looking over his shoulder. I wonder if Gretchen’s heard from him.’

‘She’s off now till the New Year. Morocco.’

‘Really?’ We look at each other and I guess his thoughts: might Kit and Gretchen have absconded together for some extended dirty weekend in the sun? No fling has ever been admitted to, but when has that ever stopped the millions of faithless over the centuries? (Let’s face it, I should know.)

‘You don’t think . . . ? Would she have had the guts to lie to the police when they called looking for him?’ I ask.

‘It’s possible,’ Steve says.

‘What about the airports? You’d have thought they’d check them as part of their search.’

‘Maybe it’s not something you can do that easily or quickly. Shall we phone her? See if she picks up?’

As I hear him connect to Gretchen, I focus on the glazed dome of the foot tunnel entrance by Greenwich Pier, allowing my mind to dislocate from the present and picture the building going up at the turn of the twentieth century. What crises did men grapple with then? Did their disasters befall them unannounced or did they create them for themselves? Were there Kits and Jamies and Steves among them? Were there Melias?

I know myself well enough to understand that this sudden hunger for perspective, the desire to reduce myself to a speck in human history, is really a ruse to diminish my guilt, my fear.

‘Any luck?’ I ask, when he hangs up.

‘Nope. She’s in Marrakech, you got that right, but she thought I was calling her with news. I woke her up, so either she’s a brilliant actress or she knows even less than we do.’

‘Well, it was worth a try.’

We sit in fretful silence until Tower Bridge, where he disembarks.

‘Something bad has happened, hasn’t it?’ he says, by way of a farewell.

Yes sounds too stark, too brutal, so I tell him, ‘All we can do is hope,’ and he heads for the door, limping a little, head down.

I would never dob a mate in. Not an enemy then, as I’d supposed, but nonetheless too late to be an ally. I wonder if he’ll mention his theory about Gretchen to the police, should they contact him again.

The tide is the highest I’ve ever seen it. As we duck through the gold-studded red arches of Blackfriars Bridge, I picture the river bursting its banks and beaching us onto the South Bank, the humans fleeing from the slimy double-hulled monster, everyone screaming.

34

30 December 2019

The Comfort Zone remains disquietingly celebratory of all things Yule. Plum pudding and ginger latte has been our special for the last two weeks, and even though the thought of drinking one makes me want to gag, it continues to outsell all other offerings. Regan, still in an elf’s hat and glittery Christmas makeup five days after Santa’s visit, has at least replaced the sprigs of ivy on each table with mistletoe.

She peers at my face and, unlike Steve, demands an explanation. ‘What happened to you? You look like you were attacked by a cat.’

‘I kind of was,’ I say.

‘You weren’t bitten, were you? If you’re bitten you’re supposed to get a tetanus jab. Cat’s teeth are so small, the skin heals over the wound and seals in the infection.’

‘I think I’m up to date with tetanus.’

‘Any news on your missing friend?’

‘Not yet.’

I can read the mixed emotions in her face: she’s charged by the sudden drama in her workmate’s life, but repelled by the unseemliness of physical violence. And then there’s the perplexing way her brain wants to link the two.

A group of women with babies commandeers our largest table for most of the morning, creating an obstacle course of prams and buggies that could be the difference between life and death, preventing, as they do, access to the fire exit by the loos. Some of the babies are plump and cute, like babies should be, but some are like tiny men, their faces sharp, bursting to escape their mothers’ arms and start contradicting authority. I experience a sudden lurch, a memory of the first time I met Kit, his complaints about the mothers in St Mary’s – They’d rather you got hit by a bus! – in that wicked, laughing way he had when he was in a great mood, meeting new people and pouring all his energy into his own charisma.