The women received this in silence, as listless and bored as patients in a dentist’s waiting room. They had left very little space on the sofa, but its third occupant, a small middle-aged man with bright red hair, had managed to squeeze in between them. He wriggled and smiled around, as if it had been a recent, good-natured public struggle. With his dirty fleece, alcohol tan and hoarse, personalised way of breathing, he looked like someone whose lifestyle choices would soon move him outdoors and to the centre of London, where he would limp up and down Shaftesbury Avenue calling, ‘I’m in bits, me!’ and showing the tourists the Krokodil sore on his neck. ‘Hey, look mate, I’m in bits!’

For two or three minutes these three stared at Brian Tate – they were less acknowledging his presence, Anna thought, than confirming his existence in some way – then, without speaking, and with no sign that they were aware of each other, or had a shared purpose, they busied themselves with their clothes. The women folded back their skirts from their thighs and slid forward so that they could open their legs; the man struggled to unzip the flies of his tight Levis. There was a rustle of cloth, a sigh or two. They all began masturbating. Two or three minutes later, they were still at it, staring ahead with expressions of absolute vacancy on their faces. Anna thought she could smell them through the glass. It was a sharp, yeasty smell, not unpleasant but not very attractive either. At the same time, Brian Tate’s liver-spotted hands began to fumble with the brown paper bag in his lap, from which they extracted a half-eaten double bacon cheeseburger. This, Tate broke into pieces, carefully separating the bun from the meat, which he held up, nodding his head and smiling at a point in the air above the Mexican box.

‘It’s coming up,’ the boy said suddenly, in a strangled voice. Silence from the others – perhaps a barely perceptible speeding up of their efforts. ‘It’s coming up!’