There was a pay-phone in the hallway at the hostel, but someone was always using it. The Spanish-speakers were especially voluble, talking for what seemed like hours at a time. They seemed to always be repeating the same few words and Stephen wondered if all languages sounded like that, if you weren’t familiar with them; or whether they really did say nothing but claro and es muy difícil. His third day in town, he rang her from a phone-box outside the underground station. A woman answered, Helena’s mother he supposed.

‘I’ll just see if she’s here,’ she said.

He was happy to hear Helena’s voice, when she came on the line. He could feel himself smiling into the receiver and realized he hadn’t used those muscles for days, not since before the party. She said she’d meet him outside the Tube near her house, otherwise he’d never find the way.

She looked very clean. Her skin was browner and her hair fairer. She was still wearing her cut-off jeans.

‘Your hair’s so long!’ she said.

‘Yours too. And you’re blonder.’

He felt shy, being looked at. Helena stared at him as if he was a newspaper she was studying, with a frank interest that had been absent from his time with the Clarkes. In his studio, Nick had observed him closely when he was drawing, but it hadn’t felt personal at all. He’d have regarded a tree in the same way, if he was sketching it. Celia only ever glanced in his direction and Georgie and Cass were like their mother. They didn’t meet your eye much. Helena was more direct.

‘Georgie told me what happened. Jesus! That’s terrible, that your drinks were spiked and then her parents chucked you out so she couldn’t even say goodbye. Apparently the accident was completely the other driver’s fault. The police told Nick the man was paralytic.’

Stephen felt fear and hope at this, and a sliver of indignation. Maybe he didn’t need to’ve been so ashamed of himself.

‘Can we talk about it in a while? It’s all a bit mind-blowing. I didn’t know that, about the other driver. Maybe once we’re sitting down?’

‘Sure. Sorry, didn’t mean to deluge you.’

They walked up the hill and along a street until they came to a tall wooden gate set into the wall.

Stephen was surprised to find himself in a large, tangly garden. It didn’t feel as if they were in a city any more: the path up to the house went through an arch covered with jasmine, flanked by a jumble of flowers and bushes. On one side was an area of long grass with a striped hammock slung low between two old apple trees.

‘Nice place,’ he said.