‘Ironman? I bet he’s looking good. Send him my regards.’

‘Okay.’

‘He uses the ribbed condoms too,’ she adds, as Dan is walking to the door.

Dan is so surprised that he walks into a rotating display of sunglasses.

‘I got you something,’ Dan says later, after dinner.

‘How exciting.’ Atticus shuts his eyes and puts out his hands. Dan tips the condoms into them.

‘Open,’ Dan says shyly, wringing his hands.

‘You brought me condoms?’ Atticus says, slightly confused.

‘Yes. I brought you condoms,’ Dan says slowly, ‘because I love you.’

The last time Dan told someone he loved them, it was his father, before the cancer claimed him. Of course he tells his mum he loves her, in that exasperated ‘Yes, Mum, love you too’ way sons do. This time is different, though. This is a declaration, and it is one Dan doesn’t make lightly.

‘I’ve never … done this before. Never been in love, only loved objectively.’

‘I love you too. I have from the first moment I saw you,’ Atticus says, grinning.

‘Really?’ Dan hates how needy he sounds, but really?

‘Yes. Fuck, yes.’

The next morning Dan wakes Atticus up with a black coffee (‘Has it been passed through the bowels of a golden elephant? I won’t drink it otherwise’) and a kiss, then Atticus punches Darth Vader on the head and Dan calls work to tell them he’s got a bug and won’t be in.

They spend the morning in bed and the afternoon wandering round Kemp Town buying vinyl records. No one takes any notice of them. They are nothing special in this area, where men dress as women and the boys wear tight jeans and quiffs even slicker than Luke’s. Here there is the full rainbow spectrum: old, young, black, white.

They stop for food and share crispy Chinese duck and sticky ribs. Atticus is effervescent, a shot of vitamin C in the leg. The air is fizzing with the pair of them. When the food is finished, and their sticky fingers have been cleaned in bowls of steaming-hot water and lemon, they sit back, full of each other and good food and, for one giddy afternoon, the unlimited possibilities of their life together.

They discuss what kind of restaurant they’d run in Paris. Dan wants a deli, autumn-coloured salads served out of blue-and-white enamel bowls. Atticus wants an upmarket bistro, where the waiters wear smart red coats and a pianist plays blues on a polished walnut piano. It’s the difference between them and always will be. Atticus is not going to change. He is who he is, whole and complete. Dan is still in training.