Emily realised she was about to discover another fundamental misconception about her life. Yes, she had been wrong about her marriage, had until last week thought all the troubles with Michael were repairable. Was she wrong about her oldest friendship, too? With Liam, she had always avoided misread intentions, perfidies, jealousies, schisms. They could flirt in fun with great ease and without consequence. Minutes ago they had fucked. They’d once done the same years ago. It was never complicated, never difficult.

‘What I mean to say, Emily, is that I’m in love with you and it’s been that way for a long time.’

‘It’s okay,’ she said. Which was all she could think to say.

‘You had no idea I was in love with you?’

‘I thought you were my friend. All this time you’ve been walking around with these feelings, not telling me?’

‘It’s not like a disease eating away at my brain. And for a considerable period of time you have been married to a moron.’

‘You’re supposed to be my best friend!’

‘We’re a little old for best friends, aren’t we?’

‘We’re not too old. Liam, the timing is not good.’

‘Nothing is more important to me,’ said Liam. ‘I have to tell you the truth now. All the same I don’t want to rush your decision. If you need time to think, maybe I should go out for a walk. Yes, I’ll go and … find a large meal.’

4.

Emily and Liam had made love once before, in 1989, when they lived together in Ladbroke Grove. Their rooms shared a wall; they both owned bicycles and parked them in the hallway, propped against each other. Sometimes at night their bikes tumbled to the floor with a jingling noise that woke Liam but never Emily. After Goldsmiths College, Emily worked in a Kilburn pub and wrote short fiction in her spare time—each of these stories, all set in Suffolk, were about cruelty of various kinds. Stories about artists, restaurants, pubs, suicides. A story about the plague. She couldn’t get her stuff published. Liam encouraged her to try journalism, and one day she sent letters to the daily newspapers in London, asking for any kind of job in the newsroom. A chief subeditor at the Evening Standard called and offered her three shifts a week, casual employment.

One Sunday afternoon Emily and Liam came in from the pub and sat with mugs of tea on the couch, and at some point their feet touched, and then their legs, and arms, and lips, and they staggered to the nearest bedroom (his), where they stripped naked and rotated through several sexual positions, as if engaged in a routine.

‘What next?’ Emily said, at one stage, over her shoulder.

‘We can do whatever you like?’ said Liam, in the manner of a question.