It was a cool autumn morning, one of those I had begun to enjoy more than its equivalent in spring. The soft sun, and brushed percussion of the leaves like the music playing in the morning at the end of the party. Time to let go of summer’s hunger.

We were on the corner of the King’s Road close to the registry office, under another of those grand porticos that my new friends kept bringing me to. We drank our beers and discussed where we were going to go together afterwards, at what point we would escape. I was still willing to take my happiness one night at a time; if willing is the right word for it.

*

Susannah was smoking outside the registry office with a man I recognised from somewhere.

‘My new colleague!’ she said, as we approached. ‘I knew you’d impress us.’

I had neither impressed nor unimpressed anyone yet. I hadn’t seen Susannah once, who worked on a completely different floor to me, but it was good of her to communicate the impression to Sophie that I was not useless. Sophie was not listening in any case, as she was being squeezed by Andrew’s best man, whom I had recognised by now: a journalist and essayist whose books I liked.

‘I’ve barely started yet,’ I said to Susannah.

‘I bet you haven’t!’

‘No: I mean I—’

‘We know what you mean, darling. You’ve scrubbed up well today.’

*

And it was true that I was wearing more expensive clothes than usual. I owned a couple of suits, but after scrutinising the impression we presented together to the mirror I decided the occasion demanded something more elegant, and so I detoured to borrow something from Jonathan. He was back living at Julia’s, the place I used to think of as their place, but now we all knew whose place it was. Julia kissed me on both cheeks, but made no attempt to apologise or look even faintly rueful about her part in the marital pause that had forced me to live with her husband for the last few months. I had wondered if I might get a thank you, but understood her tactic: pretend it had never happened; reverse to the fork where they went wrong and take the other way. Jonathan was in a kitchen with a high glass wall and roof that had not been there the last time I had been round a few years ago; it looked like the foyer of a brand-new contemporary art gallery. He was wearing an apron and slicing shallots while people on Radio 4 were arguing about a theatre production.

He took me up to the bedroom where he rifled through a rack of twenty-odd suits; after some negotiation I picked out a tight black number I could probably get a thousand pounds for on eBay.

‘Who did you steal this off?’ I asked.