Jomier prepares to email Judith. How did he open his last message? Was it with ‘Dear Judith’ or ‘Hi!’ He goes to his ‘sent’ file, recovers his last email and discovers that he had written ‘Dear Judith’. He does so again. ‘How about another movie?’ He uses the word ‘movie’ instead of ‘film’ to counteract the fogeyish opening but ends ‘With best wishes’. Almost immediately, he receives an answer. ‘Id love to how about next friday is there anything worth seeing judith xxx’. Jomier appreciates the immediacy of her reply: she must be sitting at her desk. The ‘xxx’ he knows denote three kisses – friendly smacks on the cheek, he supposes, not lingering smoochy saliva-lubricated intertwining of tongues. He emails back: next Friday is fine.

Suddenly – ping! Another email pops into his in-box. It is from tdclenaghan, alias Tom Clenaghan, a voice from the past. Tom is coming to London from New York at the weekend. He would like to meet up. Jomier is thrown. There is suddenly a danger of overloading the circuit of his social life. Jomier likes at least two empty days on either side of an engagement: less than that makes him feel that he is on a helter-skelter, and leads to a backlog of experience to enter in his journal. But he will make an exception for Tom. Tom is no Milson – no long-forgotten lost soul. He replies to [email protected]. ‘Any time except Friday night.’ ‘A drink on Saturday? 6 at the Groucho?’ ‘Fine. Look forward to it.’

Jomier does not look forward to it. The pleasure he might take in catching up with Tom is less than the pain he must endure in going up west on a Saturday night – streets filled with loudmouthed yobs on their way to get pissed in Leicester Square; and, in Soho, humanity in pursuit of distraction spilling out on to the streets from the pubs and bars – smells of kebabs, onions, aftershave, sweat, cannabis, coffee, urine. And the Groucho Club – the other end of the spectrum to the Athenaeum on Pall Mall where Jomier lunches with his friend Theo – no fogeys here but cool copywriters, architects and corporate lawyers with the odd author to give the place its bohemian cachet.