Afterwards Emmy Lou and Harry ran to the tube station in the rain under Harry’s big black umbrella, Emmy Lou held Harry’s arm as they laughed and ran, a plastic bag with her wine bottles banging against his legs and the flowers that Harry and Franny had sent her clasped by Emmy against her raincoat.

Their platforms were on different sides. Just as they were parting Emmy Lou said, ‘I’m so sorry darling, about Michael. I tried to get time off, for the funeral, but it was just impossible, it was the technical rehearsal that day. Was it – awful?’

Harry stood there where the wind blew up the platform from the tunnels.

‘It was awful,’ he said. He wasn’t going to say anything more, didn’t want to spoil this evening but then Emmy Lou touched his arm, looked up at him. ‘Oh Em, it was just – as bad as it could be. Annabel was inconsolable obviously. But the worst part was Michael’s mother. You know how his parents weren’t – very supportive, imagine his mother, only coming to London once the whole time he was ill, his father wouldn’t accept it was happening at all, he wasn’t there of course. She didn’t seem to cry, or show any emotion until just as we came out of the church and she suddenly – the coffin was just going back into the hearse to go to the crematorium – and she—’ Harry stopped and Emmy Lou saw his face quite twisted with the effort to talk normally. ‘She – made a funny little movement, I can’t forget it, as if she was going to, I don’t know, touch the coffin, throw herself in – who knows – and then she turned on us and sort of screamed, you’re all dirty, you’re all dirty and started to cry.’

‘Oh God.’

‘And the vicar – just as well she didn’t know he was gay too – he sort of took her arm and –’ Harry shrugged ‘– mumbled away about God’s Love Embracing Us All and then Annabel kind of threw herself at his mother and screamed I loved him I loved him and we had to haul her off.’ Finally Harry began to laugh on the underground platform. ‘It was like – you know a dreadful scene from some dreadful B movie, women screaming, men holding them back, even atmospheric rain pouring down. I’m afraid we left her with the vicar, Michael’s mother, I’d brought her to the church in a cab and we’d invited her back to Annabel’s for a drink but it was all too impossible. We all went home and they got pissed. I had a read-through and had to make people laugh the next day, it was like being in hell.’