‘Alright, Darren. Calm down. Come on, I’m just telling you how it is.’

Kemp winds down the window with a dramatic sigh. ‘Why don’t you have a fancy car?’ he asks. ‘You’re not a very successful lawyer, are you?’

‘Car’s okay. It goes.’

‘Okay. An okay lawyer in his okay fucking car. Piece of fucking shit more like. A Ford fucking Fiesta.’ He lets out a strangled sound of frustration and rage, bangs his fist on the window jamb, and slumps back in his seat. He shuts his eyes to think, must find the effort taxing.

Lee’s pocket pulses again. He should have muted the WhatsApp group. Tonight is his twenty-year school reunion. A few guys he knows are going.

Twenty years! An eternity. It’s been so long, and not long enough. It shames him, his revulsion at the idea of going. And now here’s Kemp, like his id, like the boys he knew in his youth, like someone he could have been if the wind had blown in the wrong direction.

He recalls how his ex-girlfriend’s brother, a guy named Nathaniel, used to go on about the problem of ‘filter bubbles’. He said it was important to mix with people from other walks of life, by which he meant comfortable, university-educated people like himself who happened to work in a different field. In civil engineering, say, instead of the civil service. If anything, Lee thinks, I want to be in more of a bubble.

‘Who were you dealing for, anyway?’ Lee asks.

Kemp shakes his head, stays quiet.

‘Was it Simpkin?’

A defensive shrug.

‘That’s not a good move, you know.’

This provokes a new tirade. ‘What would you know about it? Think you know everything, driving your fucking Fiesta? I might think about listening to you if you had a decent car instead of something my old pop would drive to the shops and back.’

‘Your pop. Is he alive? Why don’t you go and live with him? Might be a better scene.’

‘Kicked me out, mate, didn’t he. Got sick of me nicking stuff.’

He sounds like a child for a moment. He is probably fishing for Lee’s pity, but Lee is famous in the office for not feeling sorry for anyone. He takes a dim view of lawyers who ooze sympathy for their clients, buying them lunches and charity shop suits.

‘So what do you do with all your money?’ Kemp says. ‘If you don’t spend it on your car?’

‘It goes into the mortgage.’

‘London, eh?’ He grins. Back onside, just like that. Almost reverently, he adds, ‘Simmo’s got an Audi.’ He strokes the scab on his chin.

‘Lovely for him, I’m sure.’

‘It’s an S-Line. S means sport, if you’re wondering.’