“It’s Peter I’m looking for, only he did say he’d seen him, David that is.”

“Peter who played piano.”

“He did.” And I remembered again the stuttering melody—all sharps, all discord—that Peter had been playing on the morning we found Em. Alice cocked her head on one side and looked at me as though she knew where my thoughts had led.

“So what you’d like is for me to tell you where David is because you hope that will lead you to your friend.” A pause. “Did you see much of him? Peter, I mean, before he disappeared.”

“Now and again.”

“But how often?”

“Couple of times a year, or so.”

“And yet you’re both in London.”

I said something about it being normal not to see old friends all the time. About my work and his work being so busy. Late nights. Weekends. “We were friends as children. He was my oldest friend.” And I told her a few things about us, old stories, the slowworm through the letterbox, the games, the looking out for one another. Alice listened carefully.

“I thought he didn’t like you very much. Perhaps he doesn’t like his parents either. Or perhaps you’ve made this all up.”

“No.”

“No? None of you seemed prone to telling the truth. All that sneaking around. Em and Marcus. You and David. Peter, your dearest, bestest old friend looking like he hated you when he wasn’t whispering to David in corners.”

First Rob, now Alice saying Peter didn’t like me. I bit my lip. If I lost my temper, she’d have won. Besides, wasn’t it true that once you knew someone through and through, and they knew you through and through, love was always mixed with antipathy? Antipathy because you knew the worst of them, all their flaws, even the things they hid from themselves. Even more antipathy because the reverse was true. Didn’t they understand that?

Something else occurred to me.

“What do you mean Em and Marcus? You hate me for what happened. David and I—”

Alice shrugged. “People move on, Andy. I am sure you, yourself, have moved on. I wasn’t happy at the time. When someone cheats on you, it’s a blow, isn’t it? That suggestion that you’re not enough, lacking in some way. You must know yourself. Your friend Em was in love with Marcus. Always talking to each other with their eyes.”

“We were all close. After my mum died, I went to pieces. They looked after—”

“I saw them kissing. That first night. You’d gone to bed and they were beneath my window. In the moonlight. Her shivering in that ridiculous dress. They were arguing, but then they kissed and made up. I swear it.”

There were lambs in the field too. One of them was jumping for no reason, jumping and twirling its little tail. Em and Marcus.