The words had stuck in his head as he got into the car that night, responding to the buzz of the radio, and started off towards the pick-up address, Hamish Elton’s address in Primrose Hill. It was very true, James thought to himself. He wouldn’t exactly say that he hadn’t ‘liked’ his life before all this, but everything he had gained had been as a result of overcoming his natural reluctance to ask – to ask other people, and the universe in general. He’d managed to find himself a job in which he felt valued and useful, which let him meet people, and occasionally gave him a portal into a world he would otherwise never have seen. Tonight, for example, even though it was already nine o’clock, he was driving Hamish to a party in Manchester. Hamish was a TV personality of some kind; according to Karl, he was ‘paid to have good hair and hang around with Alexa Chung’ – though James, if he was honest, also didn’t know what sort of personality she was. It was the fifth or sixth time that James had driven him on one of these all-night escapades: Hamish seemed to work in Manchester quite a lot, but also to have the sort of job where a certain amount of party-going counted as work.

When they got there, James would sit in the car outside the venue, sometimes listening to classical music on the radio – he’d got quite fond of it, although he didn’t know the name of anything. The swelling, mystifying melodies; the half-asleep patter of the DJs with their odd arcane knowledge (‘this is a wonderful piece, really one of the best recordings of this Czech genius that we have’). Sometimes – before it all happened – he would text back and forth with Sally, asking her what the weather was like there, marvelling at the idea she was in Australia.

Hamish normally got back in the car about six in the morning. Sometimes he asked to be taken to another address. Once he had gone to a back alley six miles away, too narrow for James even to get the car into, and come back with a package which he asked James never to mention to anyone, and a traffic cone which James never discovered the relevance of. On the last occasion, Hamish had texted James to come in. James had picked his way, invisible, through the shouting, laughing people, the nests of beer cans and wine bottles, the glitchy music whose genre he couldn’t even have named. Hamish had emerged with a girl whose name he said was Lucienne. ‘Hello, Lucienne,’ said James. ‘Is this your man?’ asked Lucienne, laughing. ‘Like, your servant?’