Richard pushed his child’s hands up to his eyes under his glasses and shook with the same violence Diana had witnessed in Constance, sourced in similar terror and despair. Diana had no difficulty in going to him, in putting her arms around that small body, of holding that large, really handsomely shaped head against her. She held him so for perhaps fifteen minutes until the violent shaking had subsided, until he was still enough to be asleep but for the irregularity of his breathing. Finally he sat up, cleaned his glasses and put them back on. Diana didn’t move away from him.

‘I really don’t want to die,’ he said, ‘except as a way of hurting my parents, and I wouldn’t be there to get the satisfaction. It might even turn out to be a relief to them. Why aren’t you afraid of touching me?’

‘Nobody should be afraid of touching you.’

Again he made that bitter sound.

‘Do you believe in God?’ he asked suddenly.

‘No,’ Diana replied.

‘How do you explain it then? They call it the gay plague.’

‘When there was a polio epidemic—you’re too young to remember. …’

‘My stepdad is lame from that.’

‘Is he? Then it’s a better parallel than ever. When doctors suspected it could be transmitted in swimming pools, they closed the public pools, but nobody suggested that polio was God’s punishment of swimmers; nobody even suggested there was something sinful about swimming.’

‘I don’t feel innocent,’ Richard said.

‘Nobody does,’ Diana said. ‘There are a hundred reasons why any of us should be struck dead at any time.’

‘I feel filthy,’ Richard said. ‘I never expected to get sick. I expected to get beaten to death or jailed.’

‘I expected to be killed by a bomb in the Second World War.’

‘Because you were gay?’ Richard asked.

From behind that deep barrier, the real person of Diana was silent. ‘Because I was there,’ she said. ‘I want you to make an appointment with the doctor you were referred to. And I want you to phone the AIDS support people. This is the number. You have to find a place to live. They can help you. You have to have money. They can help you with that, too.’

‘Why should you want me to do anything?’

‘Because you’re Mike’s good friend, because you need the help there is. Your life isn’t over, Richard. The most important part of it may just be beginning. And you know you don’t have endless time to get on with it.’

‘This last week has been as long as my whole life.’

‘Make that a good thing,’ Diana said.

‘Could I … look at some of your paintings again now?’

‘Of course,’ Diana said. ‘You know where they all are.’