It was too wet to go on the roofs that night, a situation that was worse for Wim than the rest of us. Even he resisted braving the slates and leads, the dormers and parapets, when surfaces were as slippery as icy roads and the rain coming down in cataracts. He sat on the sofa next to Liv and told us how the night before, while Silver and I were on the modest heights of Sussex Gardens, he had climbed the green copper roofs of Whitehall, the ones you can see from St. James’s Park. I suppose everyone has stories to tell, but it seemed to me that the thing about us which drew us together was that we each had big experiences to recount. In Wim’s case it was his ongoing escapade on the roofs, in Jonny’s the murder he had attempted, and in Liv’s her abandonment of the children after the crash. That Silver had one I knew nothing of then, nor that when he told me his I would tell him mine.

Liv, of course, had a new story, though not much of one in my opinion. Jonny, it appeared, had stayed away the night before, so hadn’t heard about Liv’s experience. Everyone supposed he had been burgling but perhaps not. At any rate no one asked and Liv launched into the tale of the policeman coming to the door and her subsequent terror. We were all there but it was Wim she looked at while she talked. Lounging back against the cushions, dressed in the yellow silk tunic and black jeans, he listened or appeared to listen with an expression of ironic calm, his habitual look when anything but his particular kind of mountaineering was being discussed.

“The cop was after me,” Jonny said with some satisfaction.

“No, he is coming because Silver’s papa’s car is broken into.”

“Not me,” said Jonny. “That’s something I never stooped to.”

Liv took no notice at all. She was looking at Wim, fixing her eyes on him with that undisguised intensity that was peculiarly her own. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a woman gaze at a man with such naked longing as Liv, though it’s true that men sometimes look at women like that. It was as if she wanted to devour him and the effort of keeping her hands from reaching for him made her clench them and brought a frown to her face. The effect was the same as pain but there was no mistaking this for pain, not when you saw that slack mouth and those widening eyes. Jonny saw it and was in no doubt what it meant, I’m sure of that. When Liv said her parents were sending the money for her airfare home, he suddenly put out his hand and took hold of her chin, holding it in a hard grip and turning her face by brute force.