Harry Donaldson lay in the sun by the pool of a hotel in Casablanca. He was in paradise. Sex, safe sex, with four different – and yet somehow the same – young men in twelve hours. His body felt tired and yet glowing, and he enjoyed the way his balls ached. He had that feeling that came upon him in his most self-satisfied moments when work and life were going well: he was in his prime. He was smoking some exotic Moroccan hashish one of the boys had found for him. He didn’t care how strong it was, he wanted to be out of it at last; he wanted more than anything else to be stoned, have sex, and think about nothing at all.

But he had been away less than a day. His mind still drifted back to London: to Michael, to Fran and Emmy, and to Pauline finding her father.

Sitting in the car on the way to the airport after they’d had dinner together at the Aubergine, Harry had watched her profile as she drove. Although they’d had a short conversation as they drove away from Copperfield Hall, all through dinner as they drank champagne as promised, as she smiled with real delight at Harry’s story of his Aids test, she never once mentioned Roger Popham again and he thought perhaps she wasn’t going to.

Then just as she turned the Mercedes off towards Terminal Two she had suddenly said with a little half-laugh, ‘So you see Harry, it was true about the circus, after all. My father was a trapeze artist like I said.’

‘Indeed,’ said Harry, ‘all true!’

‘Do you think –’ and her voice was suddenly very quiet ‘– Harry, he did, didn’t he, understand I was his daughter?’

And Harry, watching her profile as she manoeuvred into the right lane, had answered carefully, ‘Of course he did Pauly, he asked you about the francs.’

And then he suddenly realised that Pauline was crying. He had never seen her cry before. ‘What is it Pauly, what’s the matter? I’m sure he understood.’

Pauline didn’t speak, suddenly stopped the car on an illegal corner, turned to Harry, tears running down her cheeks. ‘I’ve waited so long,’ she said, ‘to meet my father. And I understand – of course I do –’ feeling in her pocket for a handkerchief ‘– of course I understand he’s old and it can’t probably be important to him but – oh Harry, I’ll never know what he was like, I’ll never know him, it’s too late.’ Headlights of other cars washed over her face and her tears as they passed, and then it was dark again.