‘Don’t be too hard on yourself, Bertie,’ Kemp said when I told him, sitting at that little table in that beautifully dark and cramped and cheerful pub.

‘But I must be!’ I said. ‘After everything, I did that to her! It’s unforgivable.’ I remember tearing a beer mat into a hundred pieces, scattering them like confetti on the table.

‘It was a long time ago; you were a teenager. I think you need to cut yourself some slack.’

‘No, no,’ I said. ‘No slack. I don’t deserve slack.’ I was ashamed. I’d shown him a black part of myself when I’d been trying so hard to keep so much concealed. And now I had shown him, he knew exactly who I was. I wanted to forget I’d told this story and get another drink. I needed to be fun, night-time, pub-time Prue again. Grabbing his sunglasses from the table (he always had sunglasses on him), I put them on, tipped them on to the bridge of my nose and peered over the top at him. ‘I demand more booze,’ I said, in a poor attempt at a line from Withnail and I.

Kemp has left his sunglasses behind now. I can see them on the windowsill, left there from when he and Ryan came into the flat a few hours ago. I don’t suppose he’ll come back for them; he always had plenty of cheap pairs, for all that travelling.

Dad and I are in our chairs. Dad has his headphones on and is listening to a podcast on the modernism movement and London’s tower blocks – so he tells me. I am idling on the internet again, trying to erase the new incarnation of Kemp from my mind.

I need a distraction. I need the equivalent of putting a cheeky pair of sunglasses on and having another drink. It’s such a crying shame I won’t be seeing Salvi again – he would have been more than a decent distraction. That charismatic, cheeky man with the swagger and the grin and the bad, black edge to him I feel could mirror me in a sharp, glittering way. I’d hoped he’d really like me. I’m still so disappointed that he didn’t. I remember how he kissed me, how astonishing and remarkable and wonderful that was. How completely pointless.