Dan envies his cousin. Flirting comes easily to Luke. He is always about to embark on, midway through, or lamenting the end of a relationship. Part of Dan wants to be Luke and part of him wants to tell Luke to grow up. But while Luke is still acting like a teenager, Dan can too.

The counsellor in Dan knows they are both ‘enablers’ and their relationship is not always healthy, but when Dan is with Luke he doesn’t need to think. Luke doesn’t push him out of his comfort zone and Dan doesn’t tell Luke he needs to stop making the same mistakes and get serious. They get to be the innocent, slightly daft boys they always were.

They don’t talk about Dan’s sexuality. Dan knows Luke wouldn’t care what he is or isn’t, but Luke knows not to go there. It’s not that they aren’t close enough for deep and meaningful conversation. When their dads both died of prostate cancer only a year apart, they spent many long nights together, putting their shattered world back to rights over craft beers. Then they would hit the brandy and carry on.

‘The hokey-pokey, dude,’ Luke said, during one of these sessions. ‘What else can it really be about?’

‘I think it’s the hokey-cokey.’

Luke had snorted and said, ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ then burst into tears because Luke had always believed things were better out than in.

Dan doesn’t. He’s a Russian doll of himself, over and over again on repeat. The tiny one at the centre can never get out.

If Dan did want to talk to anyone, it would be Luke. But he doesn’t want to talk at all. He doesn’t want to be ‘anything’. Well, heterosexual, perhaps, but the thought of finding girls attractive is impossible. While eleven-year-old Luke mooned over Princess Leia, Dan couldn’t stop looking at Han Solo. Now he can’t stop thinking about Atticus Finch, his client. His bloody client!

Atticus jokes that his childhood shaped his sexuality. Dan grew up in a semi-detached in suburbia. His mum was a teacher, and his dad a hesitant accountant, who hid behind newspapers and spreadsheets. Maybe Dan can blame his father for his obsession with numbers, but he can’t pin any homophobia on him. His nan loved Fred Astaire, even though he was as ‘camp as Christmas’.