‘I don’t know,’ Bobby said. He withdrew the still aching hand, yawned, closed his eyes, and pinched tears from his lashes. He was very, very drunk. ‘I am very, very drunk,’ he announced.

Fiachra was snoring, head back against his seat. Bobby wanted to ball up his mackintosh and smother him with it, he wanted to rouse Fiachra and beg him, with tears in his eyes, pick me, pick me.

Jess reached for a beer mat, and Bobby watched her place it down in almost but not quite the same spot. The discrepancy, or adjustment, was deliberate. Everything she did was deliberate and precise. She was editing, fixing, curating this moment, as if it was already an old, old memory she was coaxing back to life. And Bobby felt ­like – nothing, like some wavering and indistinct presence cluttering up the dimmest margins of that memory, some smudgily recalled minor character she might leave in for the sake of texturing, or just cut altogether, when she was writing this scene out, however many years from now, sitting at a desk in a huge stone house deep in the woods at dusk, the rambunctious squawking and chirping of starlings reverberating in the eaves and the warm, drunken laughter of friends drifting temptingly from the garden below, ready to call it a day on the day’s writing but not just yet as she earnestly attempted to remember, what even was that arsehole’s name?

Bobby stood up.

‘I’m so glad for you,’ he managed, and he walked right out.

First he saw the pale humps, then he saw what they were. Old people, huddled on the pavement and some seated or even lying on the grassy embankment outside the apartment block. Some were in pyjamas, some in overcoats, some with their blankets draped over their shoulders. A young man and a young woman were moving alertly from person to person, talking to them and gesturing reassuringly.

As Bobby staggered up to the building entrance, the young man jogged over. He had a denim shirt on with the sleeves rolled capably up.

‘What’s up?’ Bobby asked mildly.

‘Gas leak.’

‘Extremely potentially dangerous!’ the young woman, joining him, exclaimed.

Bobby ignored them. He took out his key and went to open the door into the foyer.

‘The gas company said to stay out of the building!’ the young man said. ‘No unlocking doors and no naked flames inside or in the vicinity of the building.’

‘The fire brigade is on the way,’ the young woman said.

Bobby absorbed this information and blinked heavily. It was not information he required.

‘Look. Lads. I’m ­bone-­tired and substantially cut. I just want to get into my apartment that I pay the rent on and am allowed into whenever I like and go to bed.’