We still hadn’t had a showdown about this. I couldn’t risk a full-blown row in such a tiny flat with no possibility of escape. But it curdled the atmosphere between us.

There was something else, too, that was making me feel uncomfortable. It was to do with money. I could hardly bear to put it into words, even to myself. Azra was my beloved friend—surely she wasn’t using me? But why did she drop that hint about rewriting our wills? And should she really let me buy all the groceries? Wasn’t it enough that I was buying us a house?

Just occasionally this thought shouldered its way to the surface. I’d push it back down. Nothing in the past had led me to believe that Azra was money-minded. She lived like a gypsy, free as air, sometimes skint, sometimes solvent. She didn’t seem to give a toss, either way.

A few hours later, however, all that became irrelevant.

I remember every detail of that Sunday morning. It was too rainy to go outside and clear up the rubbish. The wind blew and we could hear the cans rolling around the terrace. Azra and I didn’t speak. I was leafing through the Sunday papers, preoccupied, and she was sitting at her computer. I sensed she was only pretending to look at the screen. Sometimes she took a breath, as if she were about to say something, and then fell silent. She wore her old Rolling Stones T-shirt, the one with the big red tongue, which she’d worn in those heady days when we were clearing out my house. When she raised her arm to scratch her face I noticed how papery her skin had become. Mine, too. I was thinking about ageing, and the wrinkled bodies of my friends when we’d run naked into the Thames, all those months ago. I remembered those little angel girls with their gauzy wings, flitting around like fireflies in the long shadows. How we’d had no idea, when we were young, that the years would be over before we knew it, and our children would be gone. Then I remembered Calvin sulking that day, and wondered whether he’d found comfort later in Johanna’s arms. I’d long ago ceased caring. I pictured him in prison and thought: we’re all in lockdown now.

‘Want some coffee?’ I asked.

Azra nodded. She sat back in her chair, her hands laced behind her head, and gazed at the screen.

I unscrewed the canister of coffee beans. ‘Sundays are still different, aren’t they?’ I said. ‘Even when every day is exactly the same.’

She nodded again.

‘I’m still going online to look at houses, aren’t you?’ I said.

‘What?’