All at once I felt a great weariness. Pierce’s games were tiring me out. I was beginning to find this talk about authenticity strangely odious. Having had the genuine experience that Pierce so craved, I didn’t feel better for it. It had made a kind of sense when I had read Night Traffic and felt that Pierce had known what I had been through. Now I saw that someone – albeit someone very talented – was able to simply conjure up that experience, I was even further separated from it. That second attack, though. If that hadn’t really happened, I might have needed to invent it. ‘How about a real drink?’ I said. ‘We could take this to the pub.’

At this, Pierce looked happier than at any other time since I had met him.

Coats, lights, keys – the assorted chores that came with leaving Pierce’s flat refocused me on the enviable fact that he had two floors to himself, and the London question.

‘Do you own or rent?’ I asked.

He looked embarrassed. ‘Own.’ No prompting was needed for the explanation, the answer to the unspoken part of the question. ‘My parents did me the favour of dying while I was still fairly young.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry. I thought the money from Night Traffic …’

‘That’s been paying my mortgage the past couple of years. It’s a good flat and I know I’m lucky to have it, but on balance I’d rather have my mum and dad.’

We walked down the creaking stairs in silence. ‘It’s the London question,’ I said. ‘Not really “How do you afford a place to live?” – more, “How is paying to live fucking up your life?” Either you’re deep in debt, or you’re giving everything to a landlord, or you’re doing a job you hate with no way out, or you live in a shithole. Or someone has to die.’

Pierce smiled icily and smacked the button that unlocked the front door. ‘Someone has to die – and that’s if you’re one of the luckiest ones,’ he said. ‘Congratulations, someone you love has gone. You’re allowed to stay. You win. That’s the sacrifice London wants. And that’s if you have asset-rich elders to offer up. Moloch in reverse.’

‘The only ones who don’t have to pay in blood are the psychopaths,’ I said.

‘Oh, obviously,’ Pierce said. He knew at once who I meant. He had met a lot more of them than me. ‘Not that it would bother them.’

‘Not in the slightest.’