‘He is my man, but he’s not a servant,’ said Hamish, ‘he’s my mate.’ James had felt an odd pride at the accolade. He drove Lucienne, along with Hamish, back to London, arriving at 7 a.m. The two of them were asleep in the back and James looked out of the window at the day taking shape: buses trundling out on duty, the familiar patterns of people doing what people did. He thought how much fun it was that there was this other planet he could visit – where people slept by day and drank all night – and how relieved he was, at the same time, that he didn’t have to stay there, that Karl and Michaela were always back here. When he dropped off, Hamish asked him not to mention Lucienne to anyone – and, as ever, James vowed not to. It was none of his business what Hamish did, why he wanted to go anywhere, any more than it was a pilot’s business to go around the plane asking people’s reasons for travel. James was involved exactly as much as he wanted to be. It was this attitude of his that led Hamish, when he became suddenly much more famous, to ask if James could drive him exclusively. But it was also because they liked each other. It was a model friendship of a certain kind: they cracked jokes, exchanged notes on the radio or the weather, got where they were going, and never worried about each other when they were not in the car.