Liam and Emily had known each other since their second year at Goldsmiths, where they both took a class on the Central European novel. She’d already heard of him before that seminar, when a friend in common said Emily ought to meet this clever Irish boy called Liam, since she’d like him, platonically. And she did, right away. After graduation, Emily and Liam (now friends) shared a two-bedroom flat with sloped floors in Ladbroke Grove. Liam convinced the landlord to let him paint the bedrooms dark red. This was the late eighties. They would both remember Ladbroke Grove as a good period, four years long. With a great deal of uncertainty—about his own talent, about losing touch with friends—Liam broke their lease and left London to work as the Berlin correspondent for The Guardian. In his new flat near Oranienplatz he was relentlessly unhappy and drank to excess but never failed to find good stories. Some weekends he’d fly back to London and sleep on Emily’s couch, bringing her German smallgoods and small quantities of excellent acid, which he’d hide inside a tube of toothpaste. Occasionally she’d post him an article she’d written for the Evening Standard or The Independent, or a short story she couldn’t make work.

Liam had been in Berlin for six years when the New Yorker offered him a job as a non-fiction editor, and by that time he’d grown distant to the pleasures of writing and said he’d rather edit other people’s work: he hoped to never again go home at night worrying about a detail or quote he might have screwed up in a story filed that day. Liam went to New York. Probably he’d never leave. Emily married Michael, a social worker, whom she met at a small dinner party in Harlesden.

Now Liam and Emily spoke once a month, if not more often, and they still confided in each other utterly, like they did when they’d sat up late in their kitchen, years ago, smoking cigarettes and drinking strong cardamom coffee. Some friendships stayed viable because they stayed much the same.

Liam said: ‘I’m guessing your husband’s girlfriend is named Sandrine.’

‘Don’t joke about Michael having an affair.’

‘I’m not joking.’

‘Don’t be serious either,’ said Emily.

It turned out the girlfriend’s name was Therese. Even the way Michael said ‘Therese’, as if drugged, made it perfectly clear that they, the lovers, had a meaningful union. In the middle of the night before Emily’s flight from Heathrow to Sydney, Michael had decided to tell his wife of seven years about his affair. Wearing scarf and gloves, he’d woken Emily at 2 am, standing statue-like above her. He spoke a little louder than he needed to. They were never partners in sleep, husband and wife: she went to bed early, he stayed up late.