He was enviably adept at defusing tension and setting people at ease. His light manner had real power. The three of us were heading somewhere one evening, when a man in a worker’s blue overall rippled forward. His arms were extended, blocking our way, and it was obvious that he’d been drinking. Nick said pleasantly, ‘Ça va?’

‘Ah non, ça ne va pas du tout.’ The man spoke with a drunk’s concentration, his red lips moving carefully in the thicket of his beard. His mother had died, he said – he was on his way to the station, to catch a train home.

Nick placed his hand briefly on the man’s arm. ‘That’s terribly sad. It’ll be hard without her.’

‘Merci, camarade.’ He was gone.

My thoughts kept looping back to that man. His strained face and solid black beard had lent him the air of a hero from Dostoyevsky: exalted, crazed. I said as much to Nick. He asked, ‘Which man do you mean?’

‘The guy whose mother had died.’

Nick thought a moment. ‘Oh, right.’

He’d known, beautifully, exactly what to say, acknowledging a stranger’s sorrow without offering easy consolation. Then he’d forgotten him. You have to know how to manage these things.

I didn’t have to teach on Friday afternoons, but Nick did. That was when Minna and I would loll around her place, listening to music and looking through her fashion magazines. Their scented pages trafficked in transformation: Future You is Looking Good! Growing up, I’d tried to avoid magazines like that – they were expensive and they represented defeat. They were devoured by girls who left school at fifteen. Yes, I said to Minna, yes, the clothes were luscious, preposterous and inventive. ‘But who can buy them? They’re stratospherically priced.’

‘Look at the colours,’ said Minna. ‘Look at the shapes. You don’t have to buy the clothes, they’re an invitation to think. Look at the print on this shirt – mauve next to green. You see those colours in Tintoretto. The Venetians loved putting greens next to pinks.’

Sprawled on the floor beside her, eating Belgian chocolates from a box, I thought, This moment, now – this is happiness. However long I live, I’ll never be as happy again. A faint, pleasurable ache came over me, a nostalgia for the present. Minna lit another cigarette and sighed. ‘More and more, I think fashion’s what I really want to do. But how do I tell Nick? You’ve seen those jeans he wears. He thinks fashion’s just … fashiony.’

When I think of Minna, I remember the music we listened to together – Lou Reed, the B-52s, Nina Hagen, the Slits. We played Parallel Lines so often that the tape stretched. Debbie Harry was plastic, photos, pocket computers, phones. She was Sexy, Modern Woman. I wanted to be her. I wanted her life. I wanted to be Bold, Intelligent Woman as well, but could it be done?