‘Oh, lovey.’ Azra sat down beside me and put her arm around my shoulders. ‘Don’t be sad.’

It came out in a rush. ‘I can’t bear it. I hate everyone being a couple and me being the gooseberry and put in the back seat of the car. Don’t they understand how lonely that is? And going to the cinema alone, it makes me feel like those grubby men in Soho, when Soho was Soho—’

‘You can always go with me.’

‘—and rushing out before the lights come up so nobody’s sorry for me. I hate it, hate it, hate it. And I hate myself for resenting people being happy.’

‘Sweetheart, it’s only been seven months—’

‘You manage it. You love living alone but you’re not the same as me.’ Shamed by my outburst, I got up and tore off a piece of kitchen roll.

‘Get another dog, then.’

I wiped my nose. Down in the street a siren wailed. Azra lived in Tottenham and this was the chorus of her days. Only the week before there had been a stabbing across the road; the police tape still sagged from a lamppost. She took these things in her stride. I, on the other hand, felt myself becoming more and more timorous. Even the sound of the doorbell made my heart jump. I pictured myself in the years to come, a wrinkled hermit cowering behind the shutters.

‘I’m not myself,’ I said. ‘I’m becoming deranged. I keep waking up, thinking there’s a burglar downstairs. Or on the roof. Or was it a very heavy squirrel?’ Even opening letters filled me with dread. I didn’t tell her that; it was too humiliating. Azra didn’t need a man to protect her from the vast and threatening world.

Instead I said: ‘I wonder if he misses me.’

‘Forget him! He’s an arse. You’ve got to move on.’

We sat there in silence. I had a suspicion that Azra was losing patience with me. Did she resent the weight of my dependence? Even a friendship like ours had its limits.

She was so brave, that was the trouble. There was a mosque down her road, where the worshippers left their shoes in the porch. A week before, she’d come out of the greengrocers and seen a man pick up the shoes and throw them into a skip. She’d yelled curses at him, chased him down the street and thwacked him with her bag for life, carrots flying everywhere.

Another time she’d slashed the tyres of a brand-new SUV, which was blocking an anti-racist march. And more, much more. She didn’t give a fig about getting arrested. How fearful I felt, next to this urban warrior. And though she sometimes embarrassed me, how proud I was of her uncompromising courage.

Azra rolled a cigarette. She was the only person I knew who still smoked. ‘It can be better with a woman, you know.’

‘Yes, you’ve told me.’

‘We know each other’s bodies and we have more laughs.’