It took some time for people to seat themselves at the long tables, decorated with flowers and cloths. Supper was brought out. The younger people stuck together, like tourists. Many of them wore black, ignorant of or ignoring Liv’s instruction. They were emotional and kind to each other. Bea could see most of them were a little drunk, or maybe high; coke, or MDMA. All the old crowd, come to celebrate Alex’s life, able to play with the things that had helped destroy him. Some of them had children, and the children played on the grass, or sat on the steps with their phones, where the waiters were trying to walk, taking selfies and giggling. The weather wasn’t warm or settled. The sky was overcast. A breeze snatched at the garden and terrace heaters were switched on. Among the older people, Bea recognised a few faces, and others, probably photographed often enough that they were absorbed into the consciousness, looked as if she should recognise them. It was a rich crowd; not the clothes or face work, or the tone of their voices, or the excess of the feast. The richness was far stronger than that. It was in the people themselves. She wondered what level of wealth it took, to rearrange the molecules. Too rich and too poor were slippery creatures, they were always out of reach. But she knew, in every part of herself, how sick it was to live with such disparity, when beyond the garden wall, just there, was poverty. Not even a mile away, not another country, but hers. It wasn’t an effort to think of it, she had only to stop trying not to. It took constant vigilance to live blinkered, so the rich wouldn’t lose their minds with terror, under the eyes of the poor, and the poor lose hope. She wasn’t hungry but she ate, to steady herself, and get rid of the brandy feeling, then she drank wine to blunt her senses. She needed not to see too clearly. Beside her, Dan was excitable and staring, like he’d had a line of coke. Maybe he had. There must be enough of it around. She was astounded at the carnival atmosphere, as if death and disaster fed her mother and her mother fed the house. Apart from Will, and one or two others, near her, she could not see one shred of honest feeling in the crowd. She caught Griff’s eye, occasionally, knowing what they knew, having heard what they had just heard, but he was as loud and ebullient as ever. He was used to pretending. It was second nature to him.

‘Remember at Westminster,’ Will was saying, ‘down the Two Chairmen? So long as we took our ties off, we always got served. Alex could charm the birds from the trees.’

‘Remember that time in Tuscany?’

‘Remember Alex’s parka, in the nineties?’

‘Oh my God!’

‘Remember –’