Not sure I should tell you…

Jake replies instantly, Kate’s words flowing out of him.

I love Rob. In just a few months, he’s turned my life around.

And you’ve made him so happy too. He loves you.

Jake can’t stomach much more of this. Another long pause.

Give me some time. There’s a lot to tell.

It’s ten minutes before Kirby returns. Ten minutes in which Jake’s eyes remain glued to the chat window. He scrolls up and down the list again, watching for the green ‘online’ icon to appear next to Rob’s name. For a moment he’s tempted to read some of the previous exchanges between Kate and Rob, but it would be too painful and that’s not what this is about. And then Kirby’s long reply drops in one go. It’s worth the wait.

We were in Thailand, having a beach party for Robert’s twenty-first birthday. He hasn’t touched drugs for years, as you know. Let’s just say we were young back then. It was late. The stars were shining. And everyone was beautiful – and intoxicated.

We all wanted a piece of Robert that night and were toasting his birthday and his incredible successes. His first two apps were already sure-fire winners – number ones in the App Store – and he was disrupting markets around the world and making his first million. Ludicrous for someone so young. He was drinking heavily and then popped something strange, we still don’t know what. Next thing I knew, he’d wandered off down the beach into the darkness.

When he returned, he looked troubled, like death to be honest. He said in a rather rambling speech that he felt he would have to change if he was ever going to make it properly. He joked that all the biggest names in tech, the people he really admired, had not played by the rules to achieve their successes. Failed to pay enough tax, ‘borrowed’ others’ ideas, misused personal data, treated staff badly. The usual stuff. All bullshit, of course, but that’s what he thought, and it bothered him. He was having a moment. Like we all did at that age. Quite an important one in his case. As you know, he’s a major force for good these days, doing all sorts of amazing medical stuff and charity work. So he was kind of conflicted about his achievements to date and how far he could really go in his future career, wrestling with this whole idea of whether you can succeed big time in business and still be a good person.