A waiter darted out of the crowd. He was neat and uniformed in black, and he moved through the stumbling throng with quick precision. He seemed to recognize Francis, and embraced him like a brother. I thought how typical it was of Francis to know someone in every corner of the earth, to have been everywhere and never mention it until after you had arrived. The waiter led us away from the dance floor and the lobby into the dining room.

Augustus White sat in state in the corner booth at the furthest end of the restaurant. He was flanked on one side by a young female escort in a silk gilet, and on the other by a man who, judging by his physical similarity, was either a son or nephew. There were several other young women and older men sitting at the table, but they all seemed to be arranged around Augustus White like the apostles around Jesus in a Last Supper tableau. Lisa began to make introductions, and was the perfect hostess, dropping unobtrusive quips to relieve tension, leaving each pair with a point of social contact or shared interest from which to start a conversation before moving on to the next. The music and the hubbub would take care of any awkward silences, but she clearly felt it was important for everyone to get on as well as possible.

‘Ray, this is Francis. Francis is a boxing blue at Cambridge. Ray used to run a sports promotion company, didn’t you, Ray?’

‘Jessica, this is John. John has a daughter at St Paul’s, isn’t that where you went to school?’

And finally.

‘James, I’d like you to meet Augustus White.’

Augustus White was a huge man in both width and height, and he was dressed like a fashion designer. Some expensive Harley Street surgeon was in the process of correcting his receding hairline, and a forest of sapling plugs appeared in regimented rows above the line of his forehead. It seemed to me that some much younger and very beautiful mistress, finally resigned to the fact that she would occasionally have to be seen with him to gain subsidiary benefits, had taken his appearance firmly in hand. He wore a Hugo Boss suit which, Francis confidently informed me in the bathroom, did not come in a size large enough to accommodate his worldly girth and must have been specially tailored. The deep blue material held a faint lustre in the spinning beams of light, gleaming like something glimpsed in deep water, a flash of teeth seen from the edge of a summer raft. He had short fat fingers covered in rings, which he habitually interlaced in front of him on the table like an old man at prayer. He was clearly not yet settled in his finery, and it occasioned endless fidgeting: touching his hand to his plugs; tugging at the sleeves of his suit; checking his platinum watch. He was surrounded by a mist of heavy eastern cologne, so much so that he seemed to exude the spicy smell like a musk. He inspired an odd combination of fear and ridicule. He was like a hippo on safari, fat and ungainly and more lethal than all the lions and snakes and spiders combined.