I was not even supposed to be witnessing this. I had the sense that he was trying not to smirk at me.

‘I’m sorry there’s no champagne,’ he said. ‘I should have said earlier when we hadn’t drunk so much, but we weren’t intending to tell you in front of Paul.’

Emily looked up at me then and made a little shrug of apology.

I excused myself and went to the bathroom, where I locked the door before opening the bathroom cabinet and looking around. There were some ominous-looking pills I liked the look of. Heart medicine, I hoped. Things to help dangerously high blood pressure. Or to stabilise suicidal moods. I shook a couple out and took a picture of the bottles. I couldn’t see any Viagra, though he probably kept that in his bedroom, or in his office drawers. Hair dye? None that I could see. That was a shame. Valium! Xanax! Hello, old friends. Perhaps they were Emily’s. Perhaps he was an anxious man behind the facade. About what? Where were his troubles? I borrowed a couple of each of the pills, anyway, before I unlocked the door and stepped out.

In the hall Andrew was hugging Sophie. She kept her arms loose by her side. When they parted Sophie’s eyes were shut. She waited a few seconds before opening them.

After I’d hugged Emily, Andrew shook my hand while squeezing my shoulder with his other hand. Again, the smirk on his face that I had not worked out how to trouble. Not yet. ‘Look after my daughter!’ he said.

‘Daddy,’ she said. ‘I’ll look after him.’

‌

‌Thirteen

Next time I come you ask me to list what it is that makes me angry.

‘What it is?’

‘Aren’t there things that make you angry?’

‘If people are things.’

‘Well. Can you give me a list of people’s actions that make you angry?’

‘Oh, God, where to start?’

‘Take your time.’

‘It’s like when people ask you what your favourite book is. There’re too many shining examples to pick one. You always forget to say Anna Karenina.’

You look past me and I know it’s at the other clock on the wall behind. I don’t like thinking of the way we must exhaust you. I hope there’s someone who listens to your problems.

‘In general might we say it’s when people refuse to see things the way you do?’

‘You’re asking if I’m just as bad as everyone else? One of those good guys who know that they’re the good guys. God, I hate those fuckers. I hate the fucking good guys.’