‘Just two hundred and twenty to go. Oh, I forgot, with the boat, two hundred and twelve.’

‘I’m glad you can laugh.’

‘You gotta laugh, gov’nor, don’tcher?’

It’s not a good attempt at a cockney accent. They part reluctantly, like lovers, not wanting to break out of the cocoon of affection around them. Julian knows, although he could never say it out loud, that for both of them real friendship is a masculine state. It’s impossible to have a woman as a best friend.

But Julian doesn’t get a cab immediately. He walks on right through to the river at Blackfriars. Trees are coming into blossom and the clouds are higher. Weak sun seeps through suggesting that winter is over. It’s like the sun in the Arctic winter, not sitting high enough to cast shadows, but creating an even, directionless and diffused glow. He and Kim spent a few days at the Ice Hotel for an anniversary and he has never forgotten the light. The whole trip was magical, from the moment they travelled in a sleigh pulled by huskies from the airfield to the hotel. The huskies had strong muscles on their hind legs, as though sausages were buried beneath the fur. They ran in their manic, unstoppable wildness through this empty and eerily beautiful landscape. The runners of the sleigh sometimes susurrated and at other times scraped on ice. The driver called to the huskies and helped them on the uphill stretches by scooting with one leg. Huskies could run for six hours non-stop, he said. Unless something was lost in translation.

It was before they had children and as he and Kim snuggled under reindeer-skin blankets she undid his trousers, opening at the same time the possibility of dangerous frostbite.

He hails a taxi. How strange this light is as they approach Mayfair; it has a preserved-fruit quality, lightly coloured and refracted by a syrup.