She flopped into him and he stroked her hair a bit. He and Gemma very rarely talked about Clio now. At first, there had been a lot of talking, because they’d been trying to justify their behaviour. (‘What a strain for you! I mean, you were basically her carer. While trying to make your own work. That’s too much for anyone to bear.’ Vindicated, he’d nuzzled his face back into her naked stomach.) But when it stopped, it stopped dead. He’d overheard her once, backstage at a festival. ‘You know what? Za’s ex-girlfriend is a folk singer. They collaborated on some cross-genre stuff really early on in his career; you should totally look it up.’ The words had shocked him into some other life, just for a second, then he’d shaken it off and got on with the tech prep for his set.

Flash. Clio in a bar, holding forth, red mouth a blur and her hands jabbing the air as she dominated the conversation, the other people with them gasping, laughing, nodding in respectful silence. He remembers being proud of her then, proud of his woman and her brain. There, that’s a good one.

It had got under Gemma’s skin, though. Next morning she was itching into it again. Woman could never let something just lie.

‘I’m sorry, hon, I can’t not talk to you about this. I’m feeling my own role in this, like, really strongly; I mean, did we basically push a woman to her death? I know it was years ago, but these things have a knock-on effect, don’t they? I mean, there’s no mention of any other relationships in any of the stuff online.’

He wasn’t awake enough to deal with this yet and told her so.

‘I just don’t understand how this isn’t affecting you. I mean, it’s making me think, what if I died. Is this how you’d react to me, all these years later?’

He buried his face in the pillow and a noise came out. It was loud and angry and he could tell she’d flinched. Fucking good. He felt for a second like the wolf man again. He rolled over to see her looking at him with those big eyes, sheets tucked under her armpits like some girl in a movie hiding her tits.

‘Fucking HELL. It’s affecting me. I don’t know how and I don’t want to talk about it, but it’s affecting me. OK?’

It was too warm in the bathroom with the door locked. He climbed into the empty tub and reached round the trailing plants to open the window, let the London morning in, horns and voices. Then he just sat there, in the bath, one toe under the tap catching the drips, looking at nothing.