And David standing there, tensed, as though the heavens were just about to be rent asunder. For a funny moment, the game became real. That’s the only way I can describe it. A shudder passed through me and then, as though it had leapt from my body to his, David shuddered too. It went on a little longer, the moment, until its edges trembled and it collapsed inward, and in the aftermath, as though from very far away, I heard the laughter spilling from us both, spilling like water.

We stayed up the whole night, waiting for it to happen, but it still didn’t come. The sky was reddening in the east, as though a great fire were burning, but soon it faded and the light was pale and colorless.

We lay on the bed, on a sagging mattress. Heads in opposite corners, feet in the middle, not touching. We were weeks away from touching, and even then David would never touch me first. He brought you close with talk but did nothing. It made a space. With Marcus, he was always there before me. He wanted me and was prepared to stay close, to queue patiently for whatever I would dish out, till I felt like a hair-netted, apron-wearing server in a canteen. But with David there was space, and in it I would learn what it was to burn for someone. Only a forewarning, then, on the musty sheet, a far-off siren, no cause yet for alarm.

Below a wood pigeon, breast thrust out like Napoleon, strode across the lawn. I thought of the day to come, of all the days to come, of my mother in her room at home; once she had had fresh starts, heralding spring cleans, swearings off, jacket potatoes and tuna, but there were no fresh starts now; the days were a pack of cards wiped clean of their faces. A pack of days to come, and among them the possibility of a black jack. The sound of the old Merc’s engine behind me in the lane. Joe at the wheel. Peter always said he was gone forever, but what did Peter know?

David went with me as far as the gate. On either side of the drive, the grass was sopping with dew. At the bend near the front of the house, there were bicycle tire tracks in it, just for a couple of meters, as though the rider had wobbled off course.

“Did you call anyone else? Before me, I mean.”

“No. Just you.”

“If I hadn’t answered, who would you have called next?”

“I don’t know. Will you come back?”

“So you’re staying?”

“I need to think what to do. And I like it here. Don’t you, Andy? There’s something about it.” David smiled. The top incisor on the left next to his canine was chipped sharp. In combination with the smile, it made him look a bit fox-like.