‘Tell me that Duncan’s not having an affair,’ she said. Her voice was brittle.

Dan gave a small, surprised laugh. ‘Gladly,’ he said. ‘Duncan’s not having an affair.’

‘You’re lying.’

‘What? What the hell, Katelin?’

‘Duncan’s having an affair, and you’re covering for him.’

‘Hey, Katelin, steady on, what is this?’

The violent siren wail of a speeding police car suddenly cut through the conversation and drowned her reply, and then another followed hard on the wheels of the first, so that Dan had to wait for a full thirty seconds before he spoke again.

‘Sorry,’ he said finally. ‘Couldn’t hear for the sirens. Look, just tell me what you think’s happening.’

‘Don’t you take his side,’ Katelin said.

‘Katelin! I’m not taking his side. I don’t know what you’re on about.’

She started to speak but stopped immediately, as if suddenly struck by a new thought. Then, ‘Hang on,’ she said. ‘He tells you everything, it’s just not possible that you don’t already know what he’s been up to.’

He felt a pulse of anger now; this was Katelin with a few glasses of wine inside her, ready to take him on. She’d have spent the evening with Rose-Ann, and turned against him on the grounds of his gender, his friendship with the accused, his socks on the bedroom floor. He lowered the phone from his ear and allowed himself a couple of seconds to fume silently while Camden life teemed all around him; the pubs were kicking people out and a drunkard took a piss against the wall not two feet from where he was standing. He moved away, towards the entrance of the tube station, and when he spoke to Katelin again, he kept his voice level, steady, reasonable.

‘Look, just tell me what’s happened,’ he said.

‘Lindsay Miller, that’s what’s happened. She’s a singer in a band, but you probably already know that.’

‘Right, fuck this,’ Dan said. ‘I’m ringing Duncan,’ and he hung up, filled with righteous indignation at the rank unfairness, her us-against-them affectation. He found Duncan’s number and hit it, then waited, backed against a wall on Camden High Street, the phone pressed to his ear. There was the usual mayhem all around him. Cars in gridlock on the roads, cyclists jumping lights, too many people on pavements too narrow to contain them. Also there was a sickly smell: popcorn or candied peanuts, the wares of a street vendor somewhere nearby. Meanwhile, in Scotland, Duncan took his time, but he answered in the end.

‘The universe as we know it,’ he said with a sort of doleful humour, ‘is officially over. It’s life, Jim, but not as we know it.’

‘Right,’ Dan said. ‘So I gather. A singer in a band?’

‘Yeah, lovely Lindsay.’

‘Fuck, man,’ Dan said. ‘Rose-Ann!’