‘Do you know how he was living when I got there? Every day he would go down to the Monaco Beach Club. His father has had a cabana there for years, and he rang up personally to say that if Francis appeared, he should be denied admittance. Their beach hut smells of that pipe he smokes, so it’s like he’s always there, disapproving while we sunbathed. The porters love Francis though, they’ve known him since he was six years old, so they let him in as long as he promised not to sign for anything on his father’s account. He would walk down to the club with a snorkel and flippers, and swim along the pebbles by the promenade hunting for jewellery. The women down there, they’re old European princesses, dolls for the Russian mafia, black girls who come down with the big hip-hop stars on their yachts. They wear their day-pieces whilst they sunbathe, and sometimes they forget to take them off when they go swimming. Francis would find pearls, gold earrings, wedding rings, all glittering in the sun shining down through the clear water. One afternoon by the pier he found a pear-cut diamond necklace with a stone as big as the nail on my pinkie, resting down between the huge flat rocks. It’s three yards deep there, and he made his ears bleed diving down for it, but it kept him in the casino for almost a fortnight. I couldn’t stop him, no matter what I said. Every morning he’d promise me he was going to stop, and every night he would go back. Every night he was drunk and high. It was like he was doing it on purpose. I can’t tell you what it was like, James. At first it was just his usual thing, stuffing every minute with life, going his own glorious road and all that crap – that’s how he presented it to me. Then things started to go downhill, and just before the end something changed completely. I don’t know what happened to him, but the last few days I was really frightened. We were staying in the Hotel du Cap, and sometimes he would come back and climb on to the balcony, and stand astride the railing, just looking out into the sea. I’d pretend to be asleep, but I’d watch him. Sometimes, I felt he was thinking about just spreading his arms and diving away from the building into the air.’ She slumped against the wall and slid slowly down until she was sitting on the step. She put her head in her hands. I was still angry enough with her to take a little pleasure in her suffering. She too had left me, but I put my hand on the back of her neck to comfort her.

‘Why didn’t you contact me?’

She laughed, a short horsey snort. ‘Why, what would you have done?’

‘How did you drag him back here?’

‘I didn’t. He wanted to come himself. One morning he just packed up his things and told me that term was about to start. I had almost forgotten Cambridge completely, I was so used to worrying about him. He said he wanted to see you and Lisa. Kept saying he had to see you, had to get everyone back together again. He started saying that a lot when things suddenly fell apart at the end. I bought him his plane ticket home. We came straight from the airport. He still hasn’t paid last term’s rent.’