‘He’d only moved in a couple of weeks before, and I’d helped him carry in his stuff. Then he goes and burns my flat down. My first thought when I heard was “Where is the old git? I’ll kill him,” and then I heard he’d died in the fire and I felt bad, like.’

‘Poor old bloke,’ said Mrs Wharton.

‘Yeah,’ said Harry.

He lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply and turned to me: ‘And what’s our Jacky going to do, eh? Got yourself a job yet?’

‘Not yet. I’m still looking about for one.’

‘What did you do in Belfast?’

‘I was a barman.’

Harry absorbed the information silently. I wasn’t sure how much the Whartons had told him about my reasons for coming to London, but there was a kind of crude grace to Harry. He didn’t scratch around for too many difficult answers. I could see he was mulling over my predicament.

‘A mate of mine is a chef at a flash place in the West End. He said they’re always needing barmen, and they coin it in tips. Do you want me to ask him for you?’

‘That would be very kind,’ I said. I meant it. Rollo and I were really beginning to get on each other’s nerves. It was becoming clear that if we stayed in the house together any longer, things would come to a head – and although he was smaller than me he had a nastier temper and sharper teeth. I had even stopped baiting him, because I could sense that he was slowly building up to biting me properly, and I had enough scars as it was.

Delauncey’s restaurant belonged to a wealthy, grizzled Australian man and a grizzled, wealthy British woman. They were a pair of ruthless old hippies who had married each other long ago on a beach in Bali, and probably regretted giving in to the dictates of bourgeois society ever since. They wore platinum love-beads, leathery tans and hand-stitched clothes that cost them hundreds of pounds from Notting Hill boutiques and then fell apart at the seams after two outings. His name was Delaney, but her maiden name was Price, so I never worked out where the Delauncey’s came from. Pricey’s would have been more appropriate.