I felt like I already knew Gary a bit from his articles and books, and from a friend’s account of going to bed with him a few years ago, when she had invited him to speak at a festival. He was Andrew’s best friend from Oxford, and though they were both energetic men nearing sixty it would never have occurred to me they were contemporaries. Not for Gary the gradual smartening and professionalism of the distinguished late male. His hair had silvered but it had not gone, and it was cut short, clipped cheaply like a raver’s, a five-quid job, maybe even a DIY-clippers number; he wore the minimum requirements of a suit like a slouching schoolboy, a black blazer and white shirt with a floppy collar, tie hanging low beneath an open top button, and below this a pair of black jeans in the loose fit he would have worn in his late twenties, early thirties, the period in a man’s life when he must make his choices and stick with them, or risk looking vain and foolish. It had been the 1980s such a very short time ago to Gary, who unlike Andrew had stayed interested in new cultural movements, in club culture, and never had kids or worked a nine-to-five. I did not mention to him that I knew someone he knew; I wouldn’t have even if his partner hadn’t shown up while we were talking. I liked him and didn’t want to make him uncomfortable. He was irritable and droll and quick to laugh. He was a hero of mine, really, I wanted to live his life or have him as a friend.

In spite of this, there will come a point when we will be persuaded that we should kill all men like him, as much as we might like them on an individual basis. We will be encouraged not to respond to their charm. They have what the young want and they won’t let go of it.

I don’t think I could go along with that, though perhaps I could. You never know what kind of thrust you can support when you only see the handle of the knife and not the tip.

It’s obvious why the next generation are hardening their morality, their stringency of expression, why they are turning away from irony, the grey area, why we are all black-and-whitening the world. Why wouldn’t they look for reasons to fail you, or me, to find us wanting? Why shouldn’t they judge and convict the enemies? There is no kindness due to those in the way of justice, to those who won’t surrender. They are readying for war.

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I tried not to notice when Susannah and Sophie looked across at me at the same time – a problem they may have been discussing a solution to.

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