On the way home, Dan wishes he could peel off his skin and hide it in a bin. Luke isn’t going to let this drop. He’ll want to see photos and know names and details. He’s going to want to meet her. Shit, he’s going to tell Dan’s sister and his cousin about her. He’s going to tell his mother and then she is going to want to meet her too.

And it’s not her. It’s him. Atticus.

By the time Dan hops on the train, in the only suit he owns, the one he bought for a funeral, he’s convinced himself that he’s going to tell Atticus it’s over. It’s all far too complicated being this new Dan who goes on dates with men. He’s only going so he can come back the way he used to be. He’s leaving Atticus and all that jazz in London where it belongs and he’s going to come back as the old Dan. The Dan who got frustrated by impossible jigsaws and uneven numbers.

But the second he sees Atticus reflected in the glass of a painting, Dan knows he won’t tell him it’s over: he’ll never be able to say those words. Not when Atticus is wearing a plum velvet jacket and a black bow tie with his hair swept back and, Christ, he’s even got a silk handkerchief poking out of the pocket of his shirt.

Dan spends a few minutes admiring him before Atticus looks up and their eyes meet. Atticus immediately stops talking to the couple next to him and marches over, pausing to take two glasses of champagne on his way. Dan watches him approach and wonders how much Atticus just lost on the sale he was making and decides he would pay it over and over again to see Atticus swagger towards him like that.

‘You came.’ Atticus’s eyes are as bright as his trousers. Surely, it can’t be him, Dan thinks as they stand, beaming at one another. Surely Dan can’t be the reason for the unbridled joy on Atticus’s face right now. ‘Can I introduce you? Can I take you around and show you to the paintings?’

‘I think you got that the wrong way around, Atticus,’ Dan says, smiling.

‘No, I haven’t. I want to explain you to them all in detail. I want to tell them all about your colour and composition. I want them to gaze at you in wonder as I do.’

Atticus doesn’t leave his side for the rest of the night. He escorts Dan to each painting with his hand pressing lightly on the bottom of his spine and Dan, who’s never really ‘got’ art, gets it at last. How can he not when Atticus is so close to him, murmuring about composition and light, reflections and single brush strokes?