She appears to assimilate this, throwing her head back and shaking her hair a little like she’s trying to get control. ‘If she had a patron, she never mentioned it. Melodie had many, many admirers. A lot of older men, of course. That’s the way of the world, I guess. There was a man from Dubai, I’m not going to say he was a sheikh because I really don’t know, but he sent her a Jeep when she was seventeen. We made her give it back, of course.’

‘Of course.’ And here I thought I’d done well from my ASMR subscribers. People sent me hand-stitched journals and once I got a baseball cap. A Jeep would be on another level.

‘I’ll check her e-mails and let you know if I find anything,’ she says to me. There’s a deep intelligence in her eyes, and somehow I feel ashamed. I’m meddling in things I don’t understand.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I keep saying. Every time I say it, she looks like she’s been slapped. Can’t do anything right.

When it’s over, I’m relieved, but my state of mind is fucked. I stagger across Waterloo Bridge and get on the Northern Line.

Some days, riding the Underground feels like an act of ritual humiliation. I have a bad habit of looking at people. I don’t mean making eye contact – I would never do that, this is London – but looking at people when they aren’t looking back. Watching out of the corners of my eyes. I rarely get caught because people are so involved with themselves, they’re busy in their own private AR worlds.

I study people because I’m trying to figure out how to do it. Be one of them. They make it all look so easy. Ever since my illness started, on any given day I’m all but writhing with insecurity and fear; I always feel like I’m two millimetres from falling apart. When I’m on the Tube I try to act like everyone else. I envy other people’s shoes and bodies and hair and trousers and handbags and tiaras and body tech. Maybe I’m just needy. I never feel I am quite plausible.

I never feel real.

Real or not, I bump into Antonio changing trains at Leicester Square. Physically bump into him. He pretends it’s an accident, but I don’t think it is. We’re still on one another’s tracking after Mel’s death.

He throws his arms around me wordlessly. All the people and their shoes and handbags fall away from my mind. I can feel him breathing and I can hear his heart beating, slow and dependable. He takes my hand.

‘Come with me, Charlie.’