I owe this case. I’ve got beef with this case. I need to shoot it right between the eyes, skin it and stuff it and mount it on my wall, for when my grandkids ask me to tell them stories about way back a million years ago when I used to be a D.

I can’t make myself tell Steve I’m gone, not yet. ‘Nah,’ I say. ‘I’ve started now; might as well finish.’

The sudden loosening in his face could be anything, relief or disappointment, till it resolves itself into a small, very sweet smile. ‘I might as well come along for the ride, so,’ he says. ‘I’ve never had food poisoning; I’d only make a bollix of faking it.’

For some reason that gets me, solid in the gut. Not like I’m welling up, or any of that shite, but something swells hard under my ribs. Weird how, when I realised I’m leaving, it never occurred to me that that’s gonna mean leaving Steve. Somewhere along the way I must’ve started taking the little bollix for granted, thinking he’d always be there, like a brother. I don’t do that shite. Because the fact is, Steve won’t always be there. Once I’m gone, we’ll stay in touch for a while. We’ll go for the odd pint, laugh too hard at each other’s stories and have conversations full of awkward stumbles where he tries to talk tactfully around work and his new partner, and I try to get him to knock that shit off. Then the pints will get further apart, and then one of us will get into a relationship and won’t be around as much; the texts will start with ‘Hey, too long no see,’ and all of a sudden we’ll realise it’s been a year since we met up. And that’ll be, in every way that counts, the end of that.

I can’t afford to be getting maudlin. ‘You little goody-goody,’ I say. ‘I bet you never once mitched off school, did you?’

‘Ah, I did. To visit my dying granny.’