Later, as they’re eating and loading up with sandwiches, William stands on a chair and asks if anyone knows where Colin is. No one does.

‘What do you do when one of them goes missing?’ William asks on the way home. Parker’s Piece is soggy after a short shock of a shower and the surprised earth smells strongly of the new season.

‘I run a choir, not a hostel.’

‘Aren’t you ever tempted to do more?’

‘I give them a place to be human once a week. That’s my contribution.’

The next day, William makes sandwiches and a flask of sweet tea and spends five hours wandering round Cambridge: the benches on Midsummer Common, Parker’s Piece, Jesus Green; the porticos of Eaden Lilley and Joshua Taylor. He sees other Midnighters, but not Colin. He does the same the following day, repeatedly circuiting the city centre in case the moment he’d turned a corner Colin had arrived.

‘It’s a pity if Colin misses the “Miserere”,’ Martin says the next morning, putting on his anorak. ‘He absolutely loves it. I’m going straight from work, and then we’re having cocoa after at the Copper Kettle so I’ll be late back. I’m not going to ask if you’ll come, but I bloody well wish you would.’

‘Have a good day.’

He hears Martin run down the stairs and the door opening. Instead of the door slamming shut, Martin’s steps come back along the hallway.

‘William?’ he calls up.

‘Yes?’

‘Have you looked in the Botanic Gardens?’

William almost runs there, frustrated for not thinking of it himself. After walking the pathways and a quick stride through the hothouses, William sits by the fountain for an hour and a half, the packed lunch on the bench beside him. As well as sandwiches, there are now two Jaffa cakes, an apple and a Club biscuit – as if Colin is a child or an animal he can lure with treats. His body tightens with anxiety as he imagines Colin in a gutter, Colin collapsed, drunk, or injured. In every imagining of him, William sees, buried under his layers, that burgundy tie round his neck.

He thinks of David at their last choir practice and it’s as if he can still feel the hand on his chest. It’s no good, he thinks. I can’t cope with this. I’m made from different stuff to Martin. I can’t bear the pain. Standing up, he imagines telling Martin he won’t be coming to choir any more, and asking if it’s still a condition of him staying in his flat. Maybe it’s time to go home, anyway. He likes to think Gloria’s had a few weeks to accept they’re finished, that perhaps she is ready to start thinking about a different future.