Maybe no one would care about me being white, and the barber would just talk away as normal. Or maybe the clientele wouldn’t like it much. No, there would probably just be a moment of silence if I went in, and then everyone would be very polite, waiting for the stranger to get his hair cut and leave so they could relax again. The more I thought about it, the more alone I felt.

I got off the bus, stopped and bought two Fruit Grain Crunch bars and a bottle of water in the all-night grocer’s, and let myself into the Whartons’ house. The television was going full blast and they didn’t hear me come in. I walked all the way up to my room at the top of the house. It was cold here, but quiet. I took off my shoes, got into bed with my clothes on and lay there on the iron bed facing the wall, with its patches of cream paint peeling delicately like a child’s sunburn. When I pressed my cheek next to the cool of the wall, I shut my eyes. After a few minutes I opened up one of the bars and ate it, breaking off chunks and pushing them in past my teeth. It was like swallowing little clods of crumbly earth, with seeds mixed in. I saved the other one for another time. It was almost good to be here, cocooned in sadness, answerable to nobody. There’s no emotion so reliable as loneliness. It turns up bang on time and promises never to let you go. For the first time in a while, I felt safe.

18

I didn’t see her for a month. For two days she was still working at Delauncey’s, but not on the same shifts as me. Maybe she had specially organised that in order to avoid me: the thought made me feel sick. Then she moved to Harrigan’s just as she had said. I didn’t try to get in touch. Every memory of her was a knife turning: she had such soft skin.

‘Are you still seeing Eve?’ Francis asked one evening while I was organising the bar before the customers came in. He was hanging up his designer cashmere coat with the falsely innocent expression of a man who had just watched you back your car into a lamp-post and then walked over to enquire if the journey had gone well. I didn’t really know what to say: a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ could cause equal amounts of mischief, in their different ways. I stared at him as if I couldn’t quite remember who he was.

He sighed sympathetically. ‘Well, you wouldn’t be the first to come a cropper there.’

I wanted to punch him so that the flesh on his complacent face went rippling in all directions. More than that, I wanted to know what he meant.

‘A cropper?’