When I wasn’t at work I rode out to canal-side bars, met friends for beer and pizza, took photos of women with exceptional haircuts. Filed it to Stev’n. Did it again. White Jesus had decided against the legal highs column in the face of new legislation; they had replaced it with a cycle-rage page in which Macaulay Culkin drove around with a GoPro camera strapped to his head, trying to provoke tradesmen to abandon their vans and punch him. He had become a viral sensation (‘Where’s my helmet? At the end of my big dick!’) and received a promotion.

Meanwhile, Emily had stayed on at the house longer than the two weeks she’d first suggested. She didn’t reply to the first emails I sent to her, and I didn’t know if she was going somewhere to check them. Then she sent me a quick one to ask if she could spend two more weeks there, to tell me she was making progress on the novel and wanted to continue working there. Fine, I wrote. Are you all right?

I’m fine, she said, but little more.

It was during the first of these weeks, while Sophie was still on holiday, that Andrew wrote me an email to ask if I’d meet him for a drink after work one day.

*

The courtyard was still fluorescing, squarely. Men juggled suit jackets, pints of beer and cigarettes. Women in strappy dresses carried jugs of Pimm’s. An idea of English leisure summoned with the right props. Red squash and cricket whites, freshly mown lawns. Grass rhymes with arse. Dennis plays tennis.

From the shop counter I watched out for Andrew and when I saw him arrive, overcoat slung over a shoulder, I said goodbye to Helen and finished up for the day.

We shook hands. ‘Hi, Paul,’ he said, nodding towards the bar, and we walked there together.

‘I’ve been meaning to tell you,’ I said. ‘I got the job Susannah recommended I apply for. I’m so grateful to you for introducing us.’

‘Great,’ he said. ‘Well done.’

He didn’t smile, which confirmed my suspicion that he was here to tell me off. I pretended not to pick up on that. ‘Let me buy you a drink,’ I said. ‘What do you want?’

‘I’ll come with you.’

There was a tight crowd squashed around the bar. We were wedged together tightly as different sections of the pack expanded to let people out with the drinks they’d bought.

‘There are a lot of jugs of Pimm’s being ordered,’ he observed.

‘Yes.’

‘Do you like Pimm’s?’

‘No.’

‘Me neither.’

The silence that followed was uncomfortable so I broke it with some inane small talk.

‘You won’t be handing out glasses of it at your wedding, then?’

‘To all six guests?’

‘Is that all you’ll have?’

‘Emily’s not had much of luck with her family.’

‘How is she?’