“Fucking? Yes, I do. I’ve got plenty of worth. I’m dripping in worth, me in my shitty flat with my made-up job and my missing hand, because at least I have the guts to know what I want and try for it, and that’s more than you do, Detective Sergeant!”

“Christ, don’t start that again. And why the devil are you so offended?” Aaron demanded, in one of those voices that combined shouting and whispering to strangulated effect. “Why is it such an affront to have someone seek you out for your company, not your—services?”

“Services? Fuck you!”

“You know what I mean.”

“You might find out what you mean yourself, if you had the balls to say it,” Joel informed him. He felt rather sick, and it wasn’t the overeating.

He didn’t think he was only worth fucking. He had plenty of friends, and a job of sorts, and a whole life he’d built all by himself in a world that kept taking things away from him. If he didn’t have healthy self-esteem, he at least had enough front that nobody else could tell the difference.

That wasn’t the problem. The problem was his response to Aaron’s hand, and how much he wanted the policeman to look at him with those dark eyes lit by desire, and that when Aaron’s telegram had arrived, he’d stupidly, irrationally hoped, because all his hard-won experience of life, all his common sense, hadn’t been enough to stop him believing deep down that this, between them, was something special.

So he’d offered, and Aaron had turned him down flat, and now he felt like a self-deluding fool, begging for crumbs, again. He should have known it was all going to end in tears; everything did, but he had thought they might have fun on the way.

“Fuck you,” he said again, since it summarised his thoughts so neatly. “We’re not friends, I don’t know the rules to the game you’re playing, and I’m tired of it.”

“Joel!” Aaron said. “Will you just listen?”

“To what?”

Aaron grabbed his arm. Joel wrenched it away. “Look, I’m sorry. I just wanted to see you, and that was selfish of me. And yes, I wish to God I could have more than just a meal with you, but I can’t. And that’s not because of you in any way.”

Why is it, then? Joel wanted to ask, but that way madness lay. He was not going to lay himself open to another rejection. He was going to extricate himself from this hot-and-cold nonsense with a man he barely knew, and stay well out of whatever trouble Aaron was in. He had money to earn.

“Whatever,” he said. “It’s been fun, lovely meal, but I’m freezing so I’m going to keep walking. Don’t come with me.”