My true nature lies revealed, I says to him. My true nature lies in a pool round my ankles. In a cruel voice now. The silence speaks in a cruel voice from now on. And then he takes out his cock, it says, then he takes out his cock and he beats me about the face with it. Then, silence.

The good news is that you were a complete innocent, the silence of my ex-lover says to me. The good news is that if you were to spool back through those recordings made in that hotel room in the Europa, those recordings of all the times we spent there, together, there isn’t a single thing to implicate you. You never betrayed anybody. You gave nothing away. In fact your tapes were of no interest whatsoever. No one learnt a damn thing of interest about you in that room.

Now, in a humiliating voice, it says it.

It was Tommy what told me you had a thing for leotards, it says. He told me you had never had a blow job in your life, it says. He says to me, turn up at The Diamond on a certain night wearing a leotard and suck this bastard’s cock, or else.

Because he wanted to rule you out, it says. He wanted to make sure you weren’t any danger. And you proved yourself not to be a danger, it says. Tommy was a danger. And Davy. Davy became a danger, it says. But you, you were never a danger. You’re not savage enough to be my lover, my silent ex-lover says to me, from across the years, now.

I sat there on the stair, with the phone up to my ear, and it was as if I could hear all the way till the end of my life, and what would come after. You’re talking to yourself, Xamuel, I says to this silence, give up the ghost. Then: I promise to forget you, darling, it says, in a voice like an absence, I promise to forget you, in a voice like a long-lost love.

*