‘Watch out!’ He kicked the stack and made some shouting noises and staggered, dropping logs with a clatter, thudding on the grass. ‘For the snakes are not content with my hotel – oh no – little fuckers love to hide in a woodpile they do.’ He turned to Dan, squinting. ‘I used to chase your wife with worms,’ he said. ‘When she was little.’

‘What?’ said Dan.

‘Yes,’ said Bea, ‘he used to chase me round the garden at Holford Road, shaking them at me. It was really funny.’

‘No, it wasn’t.’ Alex was affronted, his white face stretching out at her. ‘You hated it. Didn’t you?’

‘You liked it when I screamed.’

‘You were pretending to be scared?’

‘Sort of.’

‘To make me happy?’

She nodded.

‘I was thirteen,’ he said, ‘you were six –’

‘It was a good game.’

‘Fuck,’ said Alex. He gaped. ‘There’s me, feeling guilty all this time.’

His knees buckled and he collapsed to the ground and sat there. He groped for the bottle, then a cigarette. Bea and Dan sat down with him, making a group around the storm lantern as if it were a campfire, not a single flame.

‘Shit, Bea, I don’t know what to do,’ said Alex. ‘I don’t know what to fucking do.’

Bea spoke carefully. ‘What’s the main thing you don’t know what to do about?’

‘You’re so sweet,’ he said. ‘Our girl’s an angel.’

‘I know,’ said Dan.

‘But I don’t think she’d understand. I don’t think even you would understand.’

‘Why wouldn’t I?’ said Bea. ‘Maybe I do.’

Alex closed his eyes. ‘It’s fine. It’s always fine.’

‘We’ll be here,’ she said. ‘Me and Dan.’

He shrugged. ‘Whatever.’

Nearby, a bird started to sing, suddenly, and it sounded strange in the night-time.

‘What is that?’ said Bea.

‘That?’ said Alex. ‘Is a nightingale, is what that is.’

‘I’ve never heard one. That’s not what I imagined.’

Alex flopped down onto the ground. They listened to the short, harsh chirrups. There was silence. Then, like a percussion instrument changing into a flute, the bird sang a short arpeggio. Silence again. Then the short, quick melody. It was wakeful and young. It would not have been beautiful if the bird hadn’t been singing in the dark.

‘It sounds like morning,’ said Bea.

‘That’s what’s so good,’ said Alex.

Dan held out his hand and Bea took it. She leaned against him as they sat on the cool, damp grass.

‘“And, for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death,”’ said Alex, flat-out on his back beside them.

Because the words were not his own they came out clearly, like he wasn’t drunk, as if they were all somewhere else.

‘“And, for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death,”’ he said again.

‘“Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme,

To take into the air my quiet breath;

Now more than ever seems it rich to die,

To cease upon the midnight with no pain,