‘Look at all that you have. A wife who adores you. A beautiful house. A stable job. People have killed for less,’ he told me once, nursing a bourbon with a reverence that was lost on me. ‘I know what your problem is,’ he said, pointing a finger at me. ‘You don’t think you deserve it. You don’t think anyone deserves it.’

‘Deserves what?’ I asked, chuckling, kicking a loose piece of firewood and watching as the embers rose into the cold night air.

‘All of this,’ he said, fanning his arms out. ‘You think you have to make a choice. You think you have to make a sacrifice. But that’s not true.’ He stumbled over and wrapped an arm round me.

‘You’re drunk, Phil.’

‘That doesn’t mean I’m not right.’

He sat down then on a lawn chair, a thin layer of snow dampening the back of his shirt. Helen found us, carrying a blanket. ‘What are you doing down there? You’ll freeze.’

‘We’re putting the world to rights,’ he said.

‘I can see that,’ she said. ‘But maybe we should do that inside, where there’s less of a wind chill?’

He reached for her then, pulling her down onto him and kissing her neck. She curled into his body and they lay together beneath the stars. Simone emerged from the kitchen and rested her head on my shoulder. I ran my hand along her bump and we stood in silence. Away from the congestion of the city the stars shone with a brilliance that I felt I would never get used to.

Eventually Phil clambered to his feet and made a beeline for the house. I watched him leave with a sense of admiration that surprised me. Though I found him extravagant, sometimes forced, I felt that at heart he was an honest man. His life, the balance he’d been able to strike between his personal and professional commitments, the way he conducted himself, gave me a certain hope for my own future.

‘Keep him away from open flame,’ I called out to Helen as we left. ‘He’s got enough bourbon in him to take the whole neighbourhood with him.’

XVII

I sit alone and watch news of the pandemic. It has little to do with fear, I tell myself, more a sort of morbid curiosity. The media blackout caused by the cordon sanitaire in Oregon is now almost total. What little there is to be seen is reported out of Washington, Nevada and Idaho, where new outbreaks are reported daily. It’s only a matter of time, they say, before California sees its first victim.

Despite its virulence little is known about the disease. They say that it attacks the brain and spinal column. That victims suffer encephalitis-like reactions. Lethargy, confusion and changes in personality are all common. The media report cases of grandiose delusions and memory loss. Some hear voices, others see impossible realities. All eventually disappear.

On message boards and social networks, amateur footage circulates of a Hispanic woman in the terminal stages of the disease. She sits at home, the whites of her eyes filled with blood. The skin of her forehead wrinkled and loose, the flesh beneath swollen and bulbous, as if from some horrific allergic reaction.