He gave me a quick squeeze of the shoulder by way of apology, and then gestured to a waiter to fill his glass. The others at the table, strangers all, appraised him: so tall and slender, so well dressed, the keen and handsome face, and then … Ah! They’d seen it, what people have always been able to see in Peter, even children who don’t know the name for it yet, even when we were tiny, long before Peter himself knew what it was.

“Three?”

“Oh, four at least.” But before we could agree on how many hundreds of thousands of pounds the wedding had cost, it was time to raise our glasses to the bride and groom. I felt Peter take in my dress and then glance at my face, so that I tipped my head forward into the light to give him a better look. His fingers quickly reached out and touched the back of my hand, and then just as quickly retreated. He smiled at me. I smiled back.

“How long has it been this time?”

“About six months,” I said.

The last time I saw Peter, I’d gone to meet him and some friends of his—or at least people he knew—in a bar on my way from somewhere else. Peter had bought round after round of drinks and had his arm slung around the shoulders of a young Norwegian who looked at him with hopeful bright blue eyes.

Later that night, toasts finally over, I asked him about Anders as we strolled through the Embankment Gardens.

“Torn apart by wolves in Regent’s Park. A very sad business.”

“And the one before, wasn’t he…?”

“Made into black pudding by a German cannibal? Yes. I had to testify at the trial. Shocking.” I suspected he left them, most of the time. Or perhaps they tired of being kept at arm’s length. “Nothing to report on that front, I’m afraid. Are you seeing anyone?”

I shook my head. The Thames was a sheet of rippling darkness. By the wall, Peter turned to me.

“Whoever are these people?”

“I only know the groom, Oliver. He’s my boss. You know the type, but we get on. I think her dad owns British Airways. Or Bahrain Airways. Something like that. It’s his second go. Her first.” I paused. “I wasn’t going to come, but then I thought it might be fun. If you came too. Isn’t this where they arrested Oscar?”

Wilde, patron saint of queer and clever boys, was once Peter’s darling. I remember notes passed in the classroom: Oscar said this, Oscar said that, as though Wilde was climbing up the ivy and in through the vicarage back bedroom window each evening. We would have been about twelve. Em was already our friend by then, Marcus still a few years off.