And without giving him a chance to rebut, I turned and crossed to the bar to ask the kitchen to cancel our order. The bartender said he couldn’t because it was just about to come out, and I said, fine we’ll take it to go. Osama walked over and we waited at the bar without speaking for an excruciating five minutes until our food arrived in a white plastic bag. The pub’s regular volume of chatter had resumed by that point. Without saying a word, I grabbed the bag and we stalked towards the front door with as much dignity as we could muster.

“Thanks a fucking lot,” Osama erupted at me as we crossed the street towards Euston Station. “You made a fool of me in there.”

“I made a fool of you?”

“You let that guy completely brown-shame me.”

“What are you —?”

“And you did nothing.”

“I didn’t let him br —”

“All you wanted me to do was sit down and shut up.”

“Right, because shouting at people in pubs is such a great way to make your point.”

“You didn’t even once try to stick up for me.”

“That’s not f —”

“You didn’t say a single fucking thing to defend me or back me up.”

My face was burning at this point. I was furious at him and myself but most of all at that fucking man and his ball cap. I slammed the bag of food into a garbage can as we boarded the tube in seething silence. We rode five stops as lone continents. Whose onus was it to apologize? And for what? Soon a sadness overtook us that seemed huge and shapeless and belonged to both of us equally and also to everyone on the tube. At Dalston Junction he shifted towards me and placed his head on my shoulder. And we rode the rest of the way home as a couple.

“It looks like toe fungus.”

“Shut up, no it doesn’t,” Ana said. She was painting my nails on Osama’s bed. Sassy Saffron. “It’s a good November colour.”

She had just come from visiting Nana Ana in a Sofia hospital with her parents and was crashing with us in London for the week. As she played aesthetician, we watched the 2016 American election live feed on her laptop on mute. She started talking about her trip and her time spent visiting with her grandmother in the hospital. “Honestly, I can’t believe she’s still alive,” I said. “She must be close to setting some kind of local record.”

“Oh you don’t even know the half of it,” she replied, rubbing the excess polish off on the lip of the bottle. “As she was having heart surgery, she stopped showing any vitals. Like, total flatline. But then they finished the surgery, sewed her back up, and she woke up.”

“No.”