There was a little silence. Karl necked half his glass. He wondered whether James had anything else in. A normal person would have something in the kitchen, especially a fortnight after their bird had – not that Karl wanted to labour the point – absolutely shafted him. He wondered what he would try to explain first. That Jürgen Klopp was a football manager, someone who James wouldn’t have heard of; or that Michaela’s new man, who bore him a passing resemblance, had already put something on Facebook about her, in German but with reasonably clear import.

‘I mean,’ said James – after they had sat there, Karl’s arm still around him although he was getting pins and needles – for a silent five minutes. ‘I mean, I pretty much gave up the driving to set up with her. Help her do what she does. So her leaving, it means I don’t, I don’t really have anything now. Not to be melodramatic.’

‘Not to be melodramatic.’ It pained Karl now to remember that detail. It was a jarring note in what was meant to be the soothing hold-music of this memory, because it reminded him once more of how colossally reluctant James would be to send a text like tonight’s. How the text could only mean he really was serious. He tried to elbow that aside and go back to the comfort of the playback.

‘I think you’re allowed to be melodramatic when your woman leaves and takes her job with her, mate.’ Emptying the bottle between their two glasses. ‘I don’t think it would be overkill if you were dangling from the rafters, mate.’ Fuck, Karl had said that. But that was how you talked, wasn’t it. You were allowed to make jokes. He couldn’t have foreseen this, two and a half years into the future. Anyway, Karl was the hero of the story, not the villain. He really needed to concentrate on the bits where he was the hero.

In the back, the DJ seemed to have fallen asleep. Newcastle 14. All the fuss he’d made and he had been able to nod straight back off like flicking a switch. Well, the man would wake up again nice and soon. Karl couldn’t wait for the moment he got shot of him in the hotel lobby. He had a good mind to turn the car radio up to 10 as soon as they pulled up outside. Or screech to a stop like in the movies. It wouldn’t matter any more, if the tip didn’t look like it was happening. He’d blow a fucking alpenhorn in the guy’s face if he had one.