‘With work people,’ he said. ‘On a rooftop. The Paris end.’

‘Oh, yuck, Dan. Wish I could go.’

‘Make sure you go somewhere,’ he said.

I blinked at him. ‘I will not.’

I was all just runny organs, soaking wet and barely there.

He put on his socks, looked at his shoe rack, went hmmmm. It was fascinating: something was missing, but which shoes were gone? He did not yet know. His attention moved along before he could make the discovery. ‘Why don’t you call Chris L and see what he’s up to?’

This was the part that set me off, a swirl of tangled images, a silver shawl, a drowned body with dark holes in the skull, a shark fin that I never saw, sex I didn’t have. I gripped the edge of the bed and hung my head and howled.

‘Are, you, living, with, Chris, L, too,’ I gulped.

He rubbed my back till I stopped sobbing. ‘Calm down,’ he said. I looked at him. He shrugged. ‘That’s a whole other conversation,’ he said.

‘You are living there,’ I gasped.

I pictured the three of them living in that Oxford Street apartment, the apartment I’d never seen but only heard through walls. This seemed almost exorbitantly awful, like my fate was both exciting and redundant. Resist, I thought. Be cool. What’s at stake here? Only everything. Only your whole friendship with Dan. Think of something to say.

‘It’ll make your rent cheaper,’ I offered.

‘Yeah,’ he said, now pulling on his clothes. ‘Hey, I really have to go. But we can keep on talking.’

‘You mean you might not do it?’

‘No, that’s not what I meant,’ he said.

‘Gotcha,’ I said.

I sat there on the bed. He grabbed a pair of silver Cons and rifled through his jewellery drawers.

He whipped around and pointed. ‘What are you really thinking?’ he demanded.

‘Dan, you can’t ask that.’ This was one of the worst things you could ever ask anybody, especially when combined with whipping around and catching them out, because nobody was ever thinking something they were meant to. ‘I’m going to close my eyes for a while.’

‘Um, okay,’ he said.

I could hear him breathing, and then I could smell his breath.

‘Thank you for being so good about this,’ he said.

I nodded.

‘It was only a matter of time,’ he said.

I shook my head. He sighed.

‘Could you open your eyes?’ he said.

I blurted, ‘We just live really well together.’

‘Because we give each other lots of space and respect each other’s choices.’

I opened my eyes. ‘Yes!’ I said. Finally, he got it.

‘And I invite you to follow that to its natural conclusion.’

I gasped. He laughed. I shook my head and squeezed both of my kneecaps. I bit my lip and vibrated and gripped my bones and sniffed. I had to think of something to say, and finally I said it: