Alec had looked to Larry. Larry had looked to Alice. But who had she looked to? Whose strength or example had she called on the night a policeman stood on the doorstep, his fluorescent jacket brilliant with rain, asking if her husband had been driving a sky-blue Rover? The boys, woken by the chimes, had huddled at the top of the stairs, peering through the open hall door. They knew there must have been an accident – why else did policemen call at midnight? – but the details, the soaked road, the speed, the unlit corner, the car’s flight beyond the verge, these emerged only slowly, from several sources, over months or even years. Some things Larry had never learned: the particulars of his father’s wounds, whether he had been killed outright or had survived the impact, lying for a time with his face pressed against the wheel, hearing the hollow patter of the rain on the car roof. What manner of thoughts did a person have then, before the neurons started to fire at random? Would he have felt saved when at last Death crossed the wet ground to find him? Had there been time to forgive himself? To feel pleased?

He spent a moment reorientating himself, subsiding into the now by contemplating the crowd in the concourse, marvelling at how few people actually walked into each other. He was longing for a smoke, but like most of the State of California the bar was a smoke-free zone and to have lit a cigarette there would have been like Kirsty walking through downtown Tehran in her bikini. He finished his beer and went out to the taxi rank where the taxi marshal waved up a large shambolic Ford with a sticker on the bumper that read: ‘If I cut you off don’t shoot!’ The interior of the car smelled powerfully of exotic food recently consumed. Larry asked if it would be OK to light up.