The summer of 2012 rolled around. The problem was still becoming a problem – both the problem itself and the problematic impression that there was a problem. Nevertheless, we were often happy. We spent long weekend days in the pub, sitting outdoors, reading newspapers and magazines. I spent a little too long one Sunday and became more or less catatonic. This is impossible for me to describe because I have no memory of it, and Elise’s account was hobbled by her anger and her embarrassment. I could not be moved, and I had to be helped home by Elise and one of the regulars, taking an arm each. The next day I had to miss work. (I claimed food poisoning, and my absences were still seldom enough for the excuse to work.) Elise spent Sunday night sitting awake beside my motionless form in bed, afraid that I might stop breathing or swallow my tongue. Satisfied that I would live, she spent Monday night at a friend’s house. She called me at about 10 p.m. – I had been drinking for hours already, delighted to be out of work and left on my own, and I was unusually drunk for that time on a weeknight. I slurred and forgot things, and she became very upset, and hung up on me.

On Tuesday morning, I called her. Extraordinary measures were needed.

I said I would stop drinking. And I did.

Two empty pint glasses stood on the table in front of me, grey suds clinging to the interiors. A third was full and fresh, still frosted with condensation. My lips had made a little wound at the edge of the foam, but that was the only sign that it had been touched. Perfection. I was in the brightly lit, tacky pub near the office, the one that my colleagues avoided. Friday night was the only time I had seen it busy, full of deafening men in suits and workers from nearby construction sites, but in office hours it had a sleepy air.

Kay dropped herself into the seat opposite me at about four. I would have asked her how she knew where to find me, but I knew already: she would have asked Tamesis for a pub recommendation, perhaps specifying that she wanted to run into people. The app would have done the rest, given that we were T-plus mutuals. No Quin needed – this was just Tamesis doing what it was supposed to do.

She was carrying an early edition of the Standard, and tossed it onto the table, folded to the front page headline: ONE HURT IN PIMLICO STREET COLLAPSE.

‘Cover story,’ she said. ‘Another cover. You’re on fire.’

‘Being on fire would be the end to a perfect day,’ I said.

‘Want to compare days?’ Kay said, with a warning raise of her eyebrows.

‘Not particularly,’ I said.