‘Look,’ he said. ‘You’ve done well for yourself. Decent job. Pretty wife. A nice house.’

He crumpled up the foil.

‘What I’m trying to say is that business isn’t for everyone. It’s like singing, or football. You’ve either got it or you don’t.’

‘Coffee?’ I said. I said it too quickly, too sharply, like I was trying to parry Bruce’s blow – which I was – and like I knew it was already too late. Which I did.

To my amazement they stayed for coffee. And then sherry. At some point – my sense of time was getting hazy – we moved to the sitting room. Merry brought the Virgin Mary in and drank from it. I remember picking it up and being surprised to find it was empty. I remember Merry reaching out and stroking her nails through the length of my hair.

‘Shiny,’ she said.

All I really remember of Bruce and Tate’s conversation is its ending. This came when Tate, slurry and boyish and shimmering with temporary confidence, looked at Bruce and said, ‘How about an arm wrestle?’

Bruce chuckled, put his fists to his chest. ‘Challenging the silverback, eh?’

‘Why not?’ said Tate. ‘What do you have to lose?’

Bruce laughed, a real laugh filled with genuine mirth. He turned to me. ‘Are you hearing this?’ he said. He looked at me for a moment too long. Then he turned back to Tate and shook his head. ‘You should count your blessings, buddy,’ he said.

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means,’ said Bruce slowly, clearly, ‘it means that your missus can’t cook for shit but she’s a looker. Isn’t that right, sweetheart?’

He turned to Merry, but Merry was asleep, her head against the couch, her mouth open, her breathing audible.

When Bruce turned back, Tate was kneeling on one side of the coffee table. He had taken a cushion to kneel on, and placed another on the opposite side. This attention to detail gave me a pang of guilt, of grief. The point of Tate’s elbow was on the table.

‘I’m serious, old man,’ he said. ‘We can settle this right here, right now.’

‘There’s nothing to settle,’ Bruce said.

He stood up then, leaving Tate with his arm poised for battle. He went to the couch and picked Merry up and carried her, head dangling, down the hallway. He seemed competent in his movements, even sober, until he was passing the entrance of the room closest to the front door. There, Merry’s head connected with the architrave and she woke. The noise she made was guttural, an oof.

Bruce paused. Merry had her eyes squeezed shut.

‘Let me down,’ she said.

‘We need to get you home,’ Bruce said. ‘You’ve disgraced yourself again.’ He said this in a fond tone, as though Merry’s regular states of disgrace were an established component of their intimacy.