There was a time he came round to see James and Michaela, a couple of months after James had moved from their shared flat to hers. It could have been awkward, the reshaped dynamic, but Karl had pulled out all the stops to ensure that didn’t happen. Business was good and he had purchased, as well as a good wine, some marijuana from a contact of Hamish’s. He rolled himself a bifta as thick as a Subway sandwich. Michaela was asleep and, at James’s insistence, they opened the front door to let the air circulate, even though it was raining and thundery outside. James – who’d of course not touched the joint despite Karl’s wheedling – was the one alert enough to see the darkish shape in the hall. It was a frog, James said in a whisper. Michaela hated frogs, they made her freak out – frogs, cotton wool, and anything to do with the circus. ‘It shouldn’t be in here,’ said James, several times, lumbering into the hall. ‘Well of course it shouldn’t, pal!’ Karl hooted. ‘We didn’t invite it round, did we!’ But from the way James shushed him, from his solicitous expression, Karl realized the problem needed to be addressed. He padded into the hall. James was on his hands and knees, a waste-paper basket raised over his head, face down.

‘This is not the dream,’ Karl cackled, as the frog eluded James’s crude trap with ease, hopping out of the way a good few seconds before the bin came down on top of it. ‘Oh, man, this is very much not the dream.’ They built, in hoarse mutters, on this idea, throwing the bin between each other, taking turns to try to pounce on the intruder with their makeshift container. ‘This is, I mean, not even in the same postcode as the dream,’ said James, breathing hard. ‘This is – you can’t even visit this, and the dream, in the same day trip,’ said Karl. The joke escalated, feeding off itself, until it was harder and harder to keep the laughter down. And then, finally, when it had seemed impossible, James – with one of his slow but forceful movements – brought the basket crashing over the frog. Hurriedly they slid a thin chopping board beneath bin and floor. Karl cheered like he was watching the football. Michaela, roused, stuck her head out of the bedroom door. ‘What the fuck …?’ she asked, and in the panic of having disturbed her after all this effort, James – a bad dissembler at the best of times – shouted what would become a famous phrase between them: ‘I DON’T HAVE A FROG IN HERE!’

Karl dried his hands on his trousers. He’d been doing almost a hundred. His guts were thrashing about like a tumble-dryer. There was still time. Maybe there was still time.