My blood was racing, and I knew my face was bloody-red, but I will always be proud that, in this most horrible moment, I borrowed some adult composure from Dimension X and managed to express only my absolute supportiveness. If I hadn’t said what I said – he’s your Lachlan, I enthused – it’s likely that our friendship would have ended there and then. I was not used to pulling my weight, but it turned out I could do so in a moment of danger by repeating a single word: Lachlan. Lachlan, Lachlan. I was babbling, agreeing. ‘It’s my friend, your boyfriend . . . Lachlan!’

‘I know his name.’ Dan was laughing. ‘Steady on,’ he said.

He closed his eyes, his mouth twisted in soft bows, pleasure lips.

‘Thank you,’ he said formally. My hands on the bed twitched. Now he was holding them; they seized and squeezed his fingers. ‘Ow, no,’ he said. ‘But thanks. Do you actually like Lachlan?’

‘Yes. I didn’t used to.’

‘I know that,’ he said. ‘What are you doing with your hands?’

They’d rictussed into pincers. ‘Not sure,’ I said.

He shook himself off, animal. ‘I think I should go,’ he said.

‘Now?’ I yelped.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘It’s New Year’s Eve.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘Some party in the city.’

‘Yuck.’

‘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.’