Lucas composed the text slowly, picturing Ralph’s jovial rotund face and quick, brown eyes, the energy and intelligence flying like sparks. A decade younger than him, and a historian who had traded in his academic path for the more practical one of helping to run the college, he managed a complicated, thankless job with boundless efficiency and warmth, as well as a healthy irreverence for nonsense. He was exactly the friend he needed, Lucas reflected bleakly, if only the circumstances were different.

Saturday then? The Swan at 6? Catherine has a concert so it will be a quickie.

Okay. Thanks. Btw Heidi and I are engaged.

Hurrah! And huge congrats. Pints on me in that case. R

Noticing that Heidi was also on her phone, Lucas messaged her too, watching across the table as it landed.

Think I’ll head off.

Ok. Because of lunch with Lily?

That’s tomorrow. Just need a break.

Ok. I have yoga, and then drinks with Etienne and Iris. You coming?

No, if that’s ok.

Super-ok. I won’t be late.

I love you.

Und ich dich, Liebchen.

Back home twenty minutes later, Lucas rummaged in his iced-up bottom freezer drawer for some frozen peas to hold against his throbbing calf, pitched into some new gear of distress by the walk home. Strapping the bag in place with his dressing gown cord resulted in scores of peas shooting across the kitchen floor. In no mood to mess around with a dustpan and brush, Lucas steered them into a rough pile with the inside of his foot and hobbled along the passage towards the sitting room.

On the way, he stopped for a glance into Dylan’s room. It was echoingly empty; his son, such a master of mess, having left nothing except the ring stains on the bedside table and the pitiful note, which Lucas had thrown in the bin in a fit of rage and then retrieved to show Esther and Lily.

Need time-out. Gone travelling. Sorry.

The ‘sorry’ was something, Lucas conceded now. Before closing the door, he sniffed the air, noting with a twist that even the off-smell had gone. Back in his sitting room, he fell into an armchair, lifting the foot of his injured leg onto a low, spindly-legged coffee table, which Esther had rescued from a skip and then never liked much.

To miss his son’s slovenly habits made no sense. Indeed, it felt like a cruel trick, Lucas brooded, recalling his eagerness to reach the moment when Dylan would be properly off his hands. Now that day had presented itself, and all he could feel was anguish. Dylan was such a dolt, that was the trouble. A misguided, optimistic, rebellious dolt. Picturing how he was going to manage navigating a uni curriculum and campus had been a big stretch, let alone this new, imbecilic, underfunded attempt to explore the entire bloody world.