Banks remembered Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies. The newspapers had been full of risqué photographs and salacious “confessions” around the time of the Profumo scandal. But that was in 1963, not 1965.

“I remember now,” said Dave. “Rupert Mandeville’s house. Bloody great country mansion, more like. We used to think it was some sort of den of iniquity back then, somewhere all sorts of naughty things went on. Whenever we came across something dirty we always said it must have come from Randy Mandy’s. You must remember, Alan. God knows where we got the idea from, but there was this high wall and a big swimming pool in the garden, and we used to imagine all the girls we fancied swimming naked there.”

“Vaguely,” said Banks, who wondered if there was any truth in this. It was worth checking into, anyway. He’d talk to Michelle, see if she knew anything. “This Mandeville still around?”

“Wasn’t he an MP or something?” said Dave.

“I think so,” Paul said. “I remember reading about him in the papers a few years ago. I think he’s in the House of Lords now.”

“Lord Randy Mandy,” said Dave, and they laughed for old times’ sake.

Conversation meandered on for another hour or so and at least one round of double Scotches. Dave seemed to stick at a certain level of drunkenness, one he had achieved early on, and now it was Paul who began to show the effects of alcohol the most, and his manner became more exaggeratedly effeminate as time went on.

Banks could sense Dave getting impatient and embarrassed by the looks they were receiving from some of the other customers. He was finding it harder and harder to imagine that they had all had so much in common once, but then it had been a lot easier and more innocent: you supported the same football team, even if they weren’t very good; you liked pop music and lusted after Emma Peel and Marianne Faithfull; and that was enough. It helped if you weren’t a swot at school and if you lived on the same estate.

Perhaps the bonds of adolescence weren’t any more shallow than those of adulthood, Banks mused, but it had sure as hell been easier to make friends back then. Now, as he looked from one to the other—Paul growing more red-faced and camp, Dave, lips tight, barely able to keep his homophobia in check—Banks decided it was time to leave. They had lived apart for over thirty years and would continue to do so without any sense of loss.

When Banks said he had to go, Dave took his cue, and Paul said he wasn’t going to sit there by himself. The rain had stopped and the night smelled fresh. Banks wanted a cigarette but resisted. As they walked the short distance back to the estate, none of them said much, sensing perhaps that tonight marked the end of something. Finally, Banks got to his parents’ door, their first stop, and said good night. They all made vague lies about keeping in touch and then walked back to their own separate lives.