Dead friends. How easily they pass out of one’s life. How soon the waters close over them. How quickly ‘life goes on’. If Jomier thinks of them, it is because of his journal. Their deaths merit entries and comments – about them, about death, about Jomier’s feelings about death. The feelings are not profound. They are mostly ‘better him than me’. If Jomier could save the life of one of his friends by accepting permanent toothache without analgesic, he would not do it. This is what he thinks when he visits his dying friends. He dislikes the silly, sombre expressions that people feel they must put on their faces at funerals. He likes it when, after a couple of drinks at the wake, the mask slips. Jomier does not feel sadness at the time. He feels it later, but the sadness is at his loss, not theirs. They are dead. Their suffering is over. Jomier must go on living with fewer and fewer friends.

Most of Jomier’s remaining friends go back to his youth. Jomier has made few in later life. It is as if friendship requires that we go through things together – schooldays, gap years, college, choosing careers, chasing girls, getting married, having children. A shared purpose in later life does not suffice. The friend from his youth who Jomier misses most is the one who died from an obscure genetic disease. Marco – Mark Davenport. They met in Paris in their year out – both attending a course on French Language and Civilisation laid on for foreigners at the Sorbonne. They hung out together in the Latin Quarter. They hung out together when they got back to London. They hunted as  a pair. Marco asked every girl he met to go to bed with him on the grounds that one in ten would say yes. He also had affairs with older women. ‘After the age of fifty, they always say yes.’ He did not mind slack stomachs, sagging bosoms and dry, wrinkled skin. ‘They’re fantastic. Their desperation makes them wild. Girls are dull. Who wants to ride a horse that hasn’t been broken in?’