I turned from the drinks table. Marco was in the kitchen doorway, standing with a switched-on look in his radiant shirt.

“Sorry,” I said.

“That’s okay, but I wanted to hear your thoughts.”

“About . . . ?”

“About Julia,” he said, as if it should have been obvious.

“Julia?”

“You didn’t hear?”

“No . . .”

“I thought you must have heard.”

“What’s happened?”

He stepped close to me, glancing over his shoulder.

“She killed herself.”

“What?”

“My dad called me yesterday. She jumped in front of a train.”

“No!”

He put his finger to his lips.

“I haven’t told the gals yet. Not sure how they’ll react.”

“I don’t believe it! I was just . . .”

“I know. I know. It’s terrible.”

“I was just with her! She didn’t seem . . . I mean . . .”

I stepped back, leaning my weight against the table.

“Beyond terrible,” Marco said quietly, glancing again over his shoulder. “I feel awful. Really . . . shattered.”

“When was this?”

“Night before last.”

He told me what the papers had reported. She’d jumped in front of a train coming out of the tunnel at Russell Square. A feeling of horror lurched through me as he described it; I felt myself cringe as if to ward off a blow.

“Poor woman,” he said. “But . . .”

He gave an odd, slow-motion shrug, hunching his shoulders high and holding them there.

“What?”

“Well, I just wish we didn’t live in such an extreme black and white universe, where the slightest transgression gets you vilified for all eternity . . . perhaps I wouldn’t have fought her so hard. You know what I mean? Not that I’m going to blame myself for this. I’m just not. But maybe we’d have been able to talk it over, or something . . .”

I wasn’t sure what he was getting at.

“I mean, who knows, maybe I did do something I shouldn’t have, back in that hotel. I know we were both totally hammered, so it’s a possibility. A possibility. But it’s not a possibility you can entertain in this particular universe. Not unless you plan to spend the rest of your life as a leper.”

“What are you saying?”

“Nothing. I’m just acknowledging that I can’t pretend to know precisely what happened forty years ago in some cruddy Belfast hotel where two people, one of whom technically speaking was me, went upstairs with certainly every intention of fucking each other’s brains out . . . I mean, can I?”

He gave a peculiar smile. It seemed intended to be rueful, but some other emotion was hijacking it, warping it into something weirdly triumphant.

“You seemed pretty sure a month ago . . .” I said.

“Well, you have to take a position, don’t you? I was pretty sure. I still am. Seriously. But . . .” He shrugged again. “Anyway, look, I didn’t mean to spring this on you. I assumed you’d heard. I thought that was why you brought the champagne.”

“No!”