Peter gave me a smile that was just a twist of the mouth. I took his chin in one hand and touched his brow lightly with the fingers of the other. Peter winced.

“Sorry,” I said.

“Me too. For all of it.”

I could have said all of what? But I didn’t, because I was afraid there were things we might say to one another that would mean the end of everything. And I couldn’t afford to lose Peter. That’s what it came down to.

After that, I got what I’d wanted, because we went back to the beautiful and very expensive room, and we lay upon the bed in the dark and I think I remember Peter taking my hand. But the sadness had arrived. It was always sad to see Peter, really. That was why we saw each other so rarely.

He was gone when I woke, along with a few chunks from my own personal wedding video. I didn’t call him. I remembered enough. I didn’t want filling in. I thought that by not calling him, that night could become just one more thing we didn’t talk about. Instead, I collected my things and took the tube home, public transport as a form of penance. On the way from the station to my flat, I stopped and bought twenty quid’s worth of low-end, highly processed sugars and fats, because I was already convinced that at home an episode would be waiting for me there. And it was.

But what was waiting for Peter? That was the question. What was waiting for Peter that caused him to break the habit of twenty years, the habit he had kept religiously, of calling his mother every Sunday after Evensong?

CHAPTER 4

APOCALYPSE II

We took Marcus’s way down from the roof. As I dropped into the long, wet grass, I felt a snail shell shatter under my heel, then something small and slimy squish against the ground. After wiping my foot on the grass, I went over to where I’d left my shoes and sat down to put them on. Peter left the stranger talking to Emma and shot over.

“He’s a friend of the family who own it.” Marcus had gone over to investigate. I saw him shrug. “He’s at school with their son. His name’s David.” Peter stopped. A bubble of enthusiasm had been rising in his voice. When he spoke again, he had assumed his lazy, lecturing tone. “The parents are in America. They’re British but his father’s got business there. They’re coming back in the autumn.”