I said, “Oh, grow up,” but Silver said nothing till he had gone. Then, “I can’t see any answer to this apart from throwing Jonny out. Sometimes I think Liv will be living in my place until we both get our bus passes.”

“Don’t worry,” I said and that made us both laugh.

The moon had gone in and it was dark and warm up there at midnight. Silver said, “Tell me about the grasshopper.”

I was almost frightened, it was such a surprise. “The what?”

“You said it in your sleep. You have several times. ‘Don’t go any higher,’ you say and sometimes, ‘The grasshoppers leap across the fields.’ ”

“Ah,” I said. “The pylon. That’s what someone once called the pylon.”

“We all have one big story in our lives,” Silver said. “I expect we accumulate more stories as we get old but maybe there’s always just that one big one. That’s yours, isn’t it?”

So sitting with his arm around me, under the dead birch tree, I told him about the pylon and Daniel, how he’d tried to light his cigarette from the corona, and the fireball that engulfed him. I described how I’d held on to him and how, at last, I’d had to let him fall, how Guy Wharton had seen us and run off to get help but it had all been too late. It took a long time. Silver listened in silence, looking into my face for a while and then away at the hands folded in my lap.

“Now tell me your story,” I said.

“I will but not till tomorrow.” Then, as we got to our feet to return first to 15 Russia Road and straightaway to old Mrs. Fisherton’s together, he said in a voice so serious that it seemed to commit him for life, “I love you.”

We didn’t kiss. Not then. I carefully chose my words, not wanting to seem simply to be replying to him. Not just giving him some rejoinder. “I love you, Silver,” I said, “with all my heart.”

It was a profound moment, a plighting of troth, up there on the roofs in the half-dark. I believe we both thought we had made a solemn pact that could never be broken. What could part us if we wanted not to be parted? In silence we went back and through the window, down the four flights of stairs and out into the street. Among the glittering parked cars and the scattered litter. And on the opposite side, between the back bumper of a van and the front fender of some big expensive car, there was something dark and soft lying close up against the curb. I don’t like writing “in the gutter,” but that’s where she was.