“What do you do for a living, then?” Nate demanded.

“I raise alligators for meat and sell them to restaurants.”

“Really?” Nate tried to think if he’d ever seen Alligator listed on a restaurant menu. “Which restaurants? Anywhere I’d have been?”

“A few of the sushi bars use it. Most customers probably think it’s tuna with a Japanese name, but they don’t hide it or anything. It’s a delicacy in Asian cuisine. Oh, and Le Gavroche. They have it on as a seasonal specialty.”

“Bollocks they do,” said Nate crossly. “What do you really do for a living?”

“This and that.” Nate looked at the joint with faint alarm. “No – well, not much, anyway. I sell to a few friends, but I don’t make much off it. At the moment, I work in a bar. And I write.”

“Not much like your sister.”

“No, I know.” Finn suddenly looked very young and vulnerable, and Nate – unexpectedly – felt mean.

“What are you writing?” (Why had he asked that? Please God he wouldn’t have to listen to the boring plot of some angsty novel. If it got dull he’d go to get them both a drink, then never come back.)

“Fairy tales.”

Nate struggled to think of something positive to say.

“What’s the point of that?” he demanded. “Some German blokes already wrote down all the fairy tales.”

“No, they didn’t. There are loads more.”

“Well, I don’t think there’s much of a market,” said Nate. “Sorry.”

“Are you?”

“You should write horror. Stephen King does all right.”

“Fairy tales are often horrible.”

“No they’re not.”

“Did your mother not read you the ending of Snow White?”

“All right then,” said Nate crossly. “Let’s hear a horrible one.”

“Once,” said Finn, watching the smoke twirl into the dirty sky, “there was a Prince who was raised so that he had no idea he could ever be wrong.”

“Can I have some more of that?” asked Nate, taking the spliff from Finn’s hand.

“The King loved how confident and proud his son was,” said Finn, while Nate inhaled deeply. “And he thought it would be wonderful if he could stay that way as he grew. So he told his wise men that they had to raise the young Prince to believe he was always right, because then he would become a proud, confident leader.”

“Here.” Nate handed the spliff reluctantly back to Finn.

“He was clever, and he was an only child, and he was the King’s son,” Finn went on, “and a lot of the time when the King’s wise men answered him a question he got it right, and even when he was wrong, no-one ever dared stand up to him. And the more he was never wrong, the more he assumed he never would be wrong, and the more frightening the idea of being wrong started to become.”

Nate found it was quite soothing to stand in the cool afternoon air, smoking a joint and listening to this amiable child of the universe prattle in his ear.