‘I think that place will be open soon,’ she said, indicating a light that had come on behind the metal grill covering the Putney Bridge Café. ‘Do you want to get a coffee before we get the tube?’

I looked over at the café. I pictured last night’s pastries lying stiffly under the grimy glass counter. The roses had been taken inside the flower shop, and the diesel fumes were making me nauseous. ‘Do you mind if we don’t?’ I said. ‘I suddenly feel quite exhausted. I just want to get home.’

‘Fine,’ she said, and quite unexpectedly reached out to stroke my hair. I flinched away slightly on a reflex, then relaxed and allowed her to touch me. We walked away up the New King’s Road, and the first little drops of life began to gather pace in the early morning, as milk and papers appeared on doorsteps and the Saturday commuters stepped out of their warm homes into the freezing morning, seeing their breath and locking their doors. Joggers swept by in their self-important exertions, and a group of kids on bicycles appeared from the estates on the Munster Road. By the time we hit Parsons Green the city was shaking off the night with the vigour of a dog flinging droplets of water off its coat. We passed the framing shop where Francis had found a mount for the picture. The spot ambushed us both, but the place had closed down and metamorphosed into a clothes shop. The world reminding us that things had moved on. Neither of us said anything, but I thought I heard Jessica catch her breath. We finally found a cab along the green shoulder of Eelbrook Common, a peaceful-looking expanse of grass guarded by neon-yellow signs requesting information on a serious sexual assault. The streetlights were still on in the dim twilight, and I could make out a woman walking her dog on the distant path. I opened the door for Jessica, running on courteous autopilot. I felt secure within the familiar interior of a black cab. I gave the driver my address through the sliding panel of glass. He looked at us as we collapsed on the back seat, and said, ‘Good night, was it?’ He chuckled, congratulating himself on his own perspicacity, and turned back to the road.

When we got back to Hoxton Square, the last of the Friday-night revellers were wandering home bewildered in the morning, shambling across the streets like extras in a zombie movie. The cold had deepened, and the chill of the wind was replaced by the bone-deep freeze of winter. The man who took our taxi was white as a sheet, his jaw moving as if to chew up his teeth, and he looked so grateful for finding a cab that I thought he was going to cry when he gave the driver his home address. I felt sympathy for him. The waters of the party had receded and left him stranded at the high-tide line, quite exposed and alone. His T-shirt and tracksuit top, perfect for the warmth of the dance floor, were pitifully inadequate against London in January. I paused in front of my flat. I pretended to be checking my pockets for the keys, but I was preparing myself for the plunge back into domestic space. We had been gone for about five hours, but as I looked up at my windows, still lit to simulate life, I felt like we had been away for years.