“No. No, I don’t have sandbags.” The rain had got up, was slapping at the window. David stood there frozen, as though seized by indecision. When he turned again it was to look at me properly.

“Will you risk going back?”

“Don’t you want to know why I’m here?”

“I’m sure you’re going to tell me. The desk isn’t going to fit up the stairs, is it?”

“No.”

“I’m staying,” he said. “Do what you want. You always did.”

And with that he turned and sloshed away through the floodwater, and for a second I suddenly thought he would elude me, throw open the door and be carried off on the current, but then I heard his footsteps on the stairs, achingly slow, and then the sound of him settling in a chair. After a moment, I followed him up.

Since he had taken the chair, the only space remaining was the camp bed, so I perched on it, feet flat on the floor, our knees a foot apart. David was wearing trainers, and he took them off and stripped and wrung out his socks and laid them on the edge of the table.

“I don’t have any candles or anything.”

I had the light on my phone, but the battery was low and it occurred to me that it was actually possible that we would need to call for help. I could hear the water everywhere and once or twice the building seemed to move ever so slightly. Beyond the window, I thought I saw a tree, a whole tree, uprooted and afloat, sail past with a Smart car in its branches.

“So.”

But I did not know how to begin.

“Will the paintings be safe now?”

“Well, if they aren’t, then neither are we.” But he seemed anxious and his eyes slid to the one he’d kept with him, an indistinct pencil drawing in a small, wooden frame. David took it up and held it in his knees as though the floods were already lapping at it.

“Why have you come, Andy?”

“The apocalypse was always my thing, remember?”

“It was, wasn’t it? Really, what are you doing here? If you don’t tell me I’m going to have a panic attack. Things are not going well. You’ve come at the worst—”

“You can’t hazard a guess?”

I felt him peering at me.

“Divorce? Your therapist sent you. I don’t know. I don’t know.”

And this time, when I answered him my voice didn’t come out as I intended it to at all. Not strong or accusing, but small, almost pleading.

“I’m looking for Peter.”

I told David about the wedding, and Patricia’s phone calls, how I had visited Rob and Alice, about the clipping from the newspaper.