I’m in the pubs so often that I’m mistaken for one of the lonely souls who looks for company in such places, and could have a different bed mate each night if I so chose. I certainly wouldn’t be the only young man in the YMCA who entertained in this way. But I’m not interested, and I’ve turned so many down so often that they now regard me as part of the furniture and ignore me. I ask everyone about Stephen and Gerald, and some of them think I’m a copper’s nark. The landlords don’t like me.

‘You look like charpery, dear,’ said Max, still pouring the watered-down gin at the Captain’s Cabin, where he presides over a seriously reduced clientele. ‘People are very suspicious these days. You should know better than to come round here asking questions.’ But he tolerates me because, I think, in the event of a raid I look straight.

‘I’ve not seen hide nor hair of her,’ he said, when I asked about Stephen. When I asked about Tony, he clammed up altogether. ‘Ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies.’ The next time I visited, he asked to see my membership card – I’ve never had one – and informed me that he would no longer be able to serve me. ‘I don’t want trouble,’ he said, and there was fear in his eyes.

One night after work, eating egg on toast at Lyons Corner House, a haggard, middle-aged man sat down at my table. I didn’t recognise him, and pointedly read my Evening News.

‘You’re Stevie’s friend.’ I looked up. A pair of beady eyes, a deeply lined face. ‘You don’t remember me, do you? And why should you. In happier times I was known as Vera.’ He extended a hand, the nails cut short, no longer polished. ‘Vauxhall Vera. A votre service.’

We shook.

‘Where is he?’

‘Chez moi, dear. Kipping on the couch. And a right bloody slut she is as well. Coffee cups. Fag ends. Oh!’ He waved a hand in the air, quickly aborted the gesture and glanced around. ‘Well,’ he said, lowering his voice, ‘he says he doesn’t want to see a soul. It’s like the final act of La Traviata, it really is. Pitiful. But if you was to pay a call, I think it might not be spurned. Got a vogue, dear?’ He took the cigarette packet, wrote an address with a stub of pencil on the back, lit one and put one in his pocket. ‘Sorry, dear, but times is ’ard. The Dilly isn’t what it used to be.’ He touched the back of his hair, and his hand recoiled when it found stubble rather than the heavy fall he once favoured.

‘Don’t let me down,’ he said, digging his fingers into my arm. ‘I don’t want to be dramatic, but I think she’s dying.’

Stephen looked like a waxwork, or an embalmed corpse, the pale, yellowish skin stretched over his skull, his features too large. He lay on the sofa in pyjamas and a dressing gown, surrounded by ashtrays, all of them in need of emptying.