I was simply exalting in Lord Higham’s shame. There was a small photo of him, stern-faced, getting in a car outside his house; one of Dalziel, smirking mischievously, taken at a May Ball in 1990. And a picture of Charlie Higham outside a club called Bungalow 8, wearing a bowler hat and a fur coat, smoking from a holder, eyes caressing the camera.

I couldn’t help thinking Lord Higham had got exactly what he deserved. It would be forgotten in a week, anyway. Tomorrow’s chip paper, no skin off his back. I gave the paper back to McCready.

‘I got you some more Pledge by the way. The eco kind.’

And Danny never came.

I waited, but he never rang the bell. Ours was not a love story. For a moment I’d believed it would be, but then he went, retreating from me so far it was like he had never existed. The only reason I knew he had was the pain he’d scored on my heart; right through my very soul. And the fact that whilst he’d been here, so briefly, I’d felt alive for the first time in years. One morning I received a small parcel in the post, an old copy of TS Eliot’s The Four Quartets, with a single rose pressed between two pages: the lines about doors not opening into the rose-garden underscored. I lifted the book to my face and breathed in the old leather: it smelt somehow of Eastern bazaars, and I thought of my lover, watching Kattan, like a cat about to pounce, and I tried to staunch my tears.

I’d confused him for the real thing: he’d masked the pain of my own life with James, and it was all too easy to let myself go. He lit me up and I believed in him, so I came forward to where I thought I would meet him. Only by then, he was gone.

After a while, a very long while, I stopped waiting altogether.

Points for discussion on NEVER TELL