The gallery sells ten paintings that night, a new record, and afterwards people will say the real masterpiece was Atticus himself, though he isn’t aware of anything but Dan.

Tomorrow, when he wakes up, his phone will be full of messages and voicemails from the gallery and his father. Artists will have emailed him, asking what they need to do to get him to exhibit their work. But that’s for tomorrow, and tonight is still young.

When the gallery finally empties, Dan grabs the last two glasses of fizz and hands one to Atticus. ‘A toast – to you. You are … That was amazing.’

Dan tips his glass to drink but Atticus stops him. ‘No. A toast to you, Daniel. The most beautiful thing in the room tonight, and in all the rooms, always.’ Atticus kisses him before he has time to swallow the champagne, and the bubbles fizz and pop on his tongue. Staff are cleaning up around them but tonight Dan doesn’t care that they have an audience.

‘Are you sure?’ Atticus asks later that night, when they are in the ridiculously plush hotel room that Atticus had booked to ‘stare out the window and miss Dan in’.

‘Yes, don’t stop.’ Dan pulls off Atticus’s bow tie and lays it carefully on the dresser, along with his dinosaur cufflinks. He’s finally given in, has surrendered himself to lust, to desire, is letting it guide his hands, his mouth. All he has to do is stop thinking and feel his way.

It’s just as they are both naked and Atticus reaches for him that Dan sees it. The smallest dot and curve of ink, on the underside of his bicep.

‘Why have you got a tattoo of a semi-colon?’

Atticus shakes his head to dismiss the question, his fingers darting over Dan’s bare chest, but Dan takes his hands and squeezes his fingers gently. ‘Why?’

Atticus takes a breath, then says, ‘To remind me that I could stop, but I choose to carry on.’

Dan knows this is important. A puzzle piece in the jigsaw. He needs to write down what Atticus just said, look at it from all angles, but there is no time, because Atticus’s fingers are on him again and with each touch Dan is losing his voice, his breath, his mind.

‘Do you want to stop?’ Atticus whispers in his ear.

‘No. I choose to carry on.’

Lizzie

(Moon whale song)

LIZZIE HAS BEEN THINKING about Luke. Late at night when only the stars can hear her. About how he’s still coated in boyhood. How life hasn’t tarnished him at all. She thinks about how he smiles at anything – Lenny kicking a ball, a patch of sunlight that comes out of nowhere. He’s the kind of teacher the school fears losing. The kind of person who makes everything better just for being there.