You look at me for at least a minute and I keep quiet too, staring at the box of tissues on the coffee table between us. Is it wise to provoke the wankaholics like that? I think about saying. So I do. You ignore that and carry on.

‘Do you think it’s impossible to be a good guy?’

‘No. Just extremely difficult.’

‘By whose standards?’

‘Jesus? J. K. Rowling?’

‘I see. The very highest authorities. And you – you’re not a good guy? You don’t think you’re a good guy?’

‘Recently I’ve been behaving even worse than the good guys.’

It’s not a big smile you make but it’s something.

*

And so it came to the day of the EU vote, and the people voted. Except for me, for I was not on the electoral register, a consequence of my unusual address. But everyone I knew in London who could vote voted, and apart from the occasional lunatic exception we voted to stay. We were all calm, or pretending to be calm.

Mary and Jonathan were going out that night to a summer party in the Serpentine Pavilion. ‘Pop stars and fashion designers, actors, that sort of thing,’ said Jonathan.

‘Save it for Mary,’ I said, who had done herself up in a sequinned blue dress and bright silver sandals, her hair piled up in a way I’d never seen before.

‘You look good,’ I said.

‘Yeah?’

‘Your shoulders look very naked.’

‘Get lost.’

She was back in my room two minutes later.

‘Are you sure I look all right? This dress is just H&M. Is it a bit basic?’

‘Your beauty is so bright it’s blinding.’ I reached over and put on my sunglasses. ‘No, I still can’t look at you.’

I put a pillow over my head and she went out.

Then Jonathan came in. ‘How do I look, mate?’

‘You’ve never once cared about my opinion of how you look.’

‘Yeah, you’re right. Why am I asking your opinion?’

He was wearing one of his skinny suits that had been so fashionable when he started at the magazine.

‘Where’s your hat?’ I asked.

‘I don’t have a hat, you cunt.’

‘Then where do you keep your razor in case you get into a bit of bother?’

‘Let’s go, Mary,’ he said.

She checked herself in my mirror and pouted, tipped her face from side to side.

Lucky Jonathan. He moved into the mirror beside her and I watched them watching themselves framed together. They might have made a nice-looking couple for a few years; I might have been very jealous if I hadn’t had my own assignation that evening.

*