‘Leave a man’s clothes out of it,’ the Irish said.

This would go on for the night, he knew, and so he moved through to the lounge, where the slot machine garbled and the pool balls conversed in great agitation. He bought a pint bottle of Magners – ‘the taste of summer’– and he poured half of it to a glass filled with ice. The lounge began to fill up. The night was climbing up itself. One bottle gave onto the next; the first three were distinct, come the fourth they began to blur. The lounge was full of lively young creatures laden with trinkets and jaunty with menace. There was a bus organised for a nightclub in Essex. Eyes rolled up in their heads. The whites of eyes were everywhere conspicuous.

It was not so long until he was seeing double. Twice the shaven heads and twice the pool balls, and every image mirrored in the mirrors behind the bar was doubled again and he had to shut one eye tightly for the crowd to halve in number. It was in such a condition that he saw her come across the lounge. The illusion held for the usual dream of a moment but then persisted. She broke through the field of his myopia and kept on coming. And then she was leaning down to him, there in his chair, in the lounge of the fucking Ducks, in fucking Leytonstone, and she was saying:

‘Daniel?’

He wasn’t sure about trying out some words. He opened the shut eye and the world threatened to double up again but to his relief it held.

‘Ah Jesus,’ he said, and he tried to make it sound as casual as possible.

She laughed and leaned closer again – he could smell her – and she kissed his cheek.

‘I knew you were east somewhere,’ she said, ‘but Jesus!’

‘What the fuck are you doing here?’

The shock of it sobered him. She pulled up a stool beside. She crossed her legs.

‘My uncle died,’ she said. ‘He was Leyton?’

‘Only down the road,’ he said, and he ran a hand through his hair.

‘I know,’ she said. ‘I just walked it with my cousins. How’re you, Daniel?’

‘It’s like I’m trippin’,’ he said. ‘On fucken mushrooms or something?’

‘You’re not still at that caper?’ she said.

‘Hardly,’ he said. ‘Since.’

‘How’ve you been, Daniel?’

‘Making steady progress, all told,’ he said.

‘Still a bit of a rocket, I’d say … Jesus, this is unreal!’

‘It’s bizarre,’ he agreed.

She looked around, uncertainly:

‘Who’re you with?’

‘I’m on my own.’

‘Ah, Daniel, on a Saturday night?’

It was three whole months they had been together. Then she took the heart out of him and ate it.

‘Jesus,’ he said.

‘And here we are,’ she said.

‘Daniel and Alicia,’ he said. ‘Long time since those names been seen in consort.’

‘Consort!’ she said. ‘There you go with your words.’

‘Well this is it,’ he said.

‘You’re skinny,’ she said. ‘Are you looking after yourself?’