‘We can talk when I get back. Should be back around six. Help yourself to whatever you want,’ he says. He pauses when he sees the agitation in my expression. ‘It’s fine, it’s just me in the house.’

‘Thanks, Seb,’ I say. ‘But I’ll get out of your hair. And I’ll get these back to you if you can show me where you put my other clothes.’

He stops in the doorway and turns to face me. His smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

‘Xander. No. Please. Just stay.’

‘I don’t know. I find being indoors – it’s hard for me.’

He stops and then fumbles around in his pocket until his wallet appears in his hands. I recoil but he isn’t giving me money.

‘Then take a walk. Jump on a bus, get some air. Here, take my old Oyster. There’s thirty quid or something on it. But stay – at least till I get back,’ he says.

I nod, but I am sure I’ll be gone for good when he returns. Besides, he hasn’t given me a key.

Once he’s gone I sit and shovel food into my mouth. I pour some coffee and take a deep draught. The caffeine circulates warmly through my body until cell by cell my body shakes itself free from sleep. As the energy returns to my muscles, I go into the living room which is pale and bright. Polished surfaces wink at me from every sharp edge. All this new furniture but I know this room, this house – I know its bones, even if the flesh is new. I look for more signs of Nina, but find none. What happened to her?

A television set the size of a Rothko decorates one wall, a set of stereo equipment with tubular speakers lies beneath. I find just one picture of Seb on the mantel. In it he’s twenty-two maybe, his cheeks pink against an azure sky. There’s just the faintest impression of a college building in the background. And there at the front is Nina, and next to her, Grace.

I think I remember some of this day. I was there during this picture, I am sure of it, though I am not in it. Maybe I’m behind the lens. The odd thing is that in my memory of this picture, I am in it. I can visualise the expression I held, impatience I think it was, because I didn’t want to be in it.

Seb looks the same. Perhaps he’s rounder in the cheek in the picture than now, and less grey. But the eyes are the same shade of blue. And although it shouldn’t, this surprises me. The hands, they’re the same too. And he, above all, is the same. There’s still this current of beauty.