I shielded my eyes from the sun and looked across the lawn. My father was shambling along at Cory’s side, his hands behind his back and his hair fluffed up above his ears. He looked as if he’d been born doddery and mild-mannered.

“It turns out your friend’s mother is some great luminary in the art world,” said Tom. “Or used to be. Diane, is it? Or Diana? Anyway, your father recognised her name and went into raptures, and meanwhile your friend—”

“Cory.”

“Cory turns out to be the world’s greatest admirer of your Dad’s reviews for the London Globe.”

“Oh, I see.”

We watched them weave their unhurried way around the rose beds, and I remembered last night like an improbable story I’d made up in my head. Cory was a stranger to me in broad daylight. The back of his head looked entirely unfamiliar as it disappeared through a leafy archway, and I couldn’t believe my own self-assurance last night. How could I have lain on the wet grass with him, touching and being touched, drifting between sleep and bliss? Where did I get the confidence? Perhaps it had something to do with the darkness. Perhaps it was because the moonlight had broken him into manageable pieces—a row of knuckles here, a lock of hair there, a dusty foot, a glinting eye, a moistened lip.

“I don’t know about you,” said Tom, “but I could do with some breakfast.”

I turned to him and caught sight of my own reflection, distorted by the curve of the car door: bulging forehead, squinting eyes, tapering legs.

“Breakfast,” I echoed. Tom checked his watch, and the pale flash of his wrist broke my trance. I looked at him—I mean, I really saw him—for the first time that day. His eyes were a scrawl of fine red lines, and his skin was ashen. I pictured him driving through the night at my father’s behest—because Tom drove, and Dad didn’t, and that’s what friends are for. Five hours at the wheel, fending off secondhand fag fumes and secondhand angst, and all the time, at the back of his mind, our conversation the other night, and the words of that awful review in yesterday’s London Globe. What was it Dad had written? Something about clever-clever catalogue notes and waffle, and that phrase “overthought and overwrought” in the closing paragraph.

“I’m buying breakfast,” I said, although it wasn’t much of a gesture. “I’ll just fetch my purse, I’ll be one minute—”

“No!”

I stopped dead.

“Sorry,” said Tom. “But please don’t go back into that house. It doesn’t matter who pays.”

I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and frowned.

“If you go inside now, you’ll never get away. I know what will happen. You’ll run into your dad and what’s-his-name . . .”

“Cory.”