He had achieved things. He’d caught Wilfred Molesworth, put away a lot of men who deserved it, done things that needed doing to keep people safe. He knew that intellectually. But his belief in the job was slipping through his fingers like sand, and all the faster because of his constant drumbeat of regret over Joel.

He had made such a damned mess of that. He shouldn’t have taken Joel out for dinner at all: it had been too much temptation. He’d wanted to blurt it all out, tell him everything, unburden his soul of his fears and worries because Joel felt absurdly like someone he could trust. He’d wanted to go back to that wretched bedsit more than he wanted air. And when he’d learned he couldn’t, he should have left him at Shafi’s, rather than trailing after him like a dog and then abruptly blurting out a refusal without explanation. No wonder Joel had been offended.

He wished he could have gone back with Joel. He wished more that he still had him as a friend. He had a feeling that he wasn’t going to have any friends at all left by the end of this.

He had started composing a letter of apology, one to send if everything either got resolved or went badly wrong, and had managed two paragraphs over three days. He was so tired.

He plodded up the stairs to his flat, head low, contemplating dinner without enthusiasm. Another omelette, he supposed: the thought didn’t appeal. Then he saw the envelope.

It was jammed at the base of his front door, which was exceedingly tight-fitting: he kept meaning to get it looked at. A white rectangle on the mat, no inscription. He opened it, and pulled out a sheet of paper adorned with an ill-controlled scrawl.

Angelos now

JW

***

AARON RAN DOWN THE stairs and back out into the cold, having taken a full seventy seconds to change his shirt and tidy his hair. He hadn’t shaved, although he tended to sport a five o’clock shadow and it was well past that hour; he didn’t want to waste the time. The thump of breathless excitement at Joel’s unceremonious eruption back into his life was irresistible.

Angelo’s Italian restaurant was on the corner of the Grove: it was where he’d thought about taking Joel for the ravioli. He strode in and was greeted by the proprietor. “Mr. Fowler, good to see you! Your friend has been waiting—” Angelo made a face to indicate an excessive time. “I give him bread.”

“Thank you,” Aaron said, and followed him to the table where Joel sat with a half-demolished plate of bread, a half-drunk glass of red wine, and the expression of a deeply unhappy man. “Joel. Good evening?”

Joel just glared. Angelo pulled Aaron’s chair out for him. “A drink, Mr. Fowler?”