‘I’m really sorry about before with the ring,’ I said.

‘Sophie said you’ve been arguing.’

‘Yes.’

‘She didn’t want to tell me what about but I can guess.’

‘It was a misunderstanding.’

‘Well. Let’s make sure you and me understand each other. Are you planning on staying here or are you going to go now?’

‘I’ll, er. I’ll say goodbye.’

‘Correct answer.’

I nearly said something then, but I turned away to make my other farewells. When I came back to Andrew and held out my hand for him to shake, saying ‘Congratulations’ in a way I meant to mean ‘You win’, he looked at it and turned away.

Emily walked me to the door. ‘Did you see that?’ I asked her.

‘Yes. He thinks you’ve been horrible to his daughter.’

‘We’ve been horrible to each other.’

She sighed.

‘Look,’ I said. ‘Before I go, just let me say—’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Please don’t. There’s nothing to say.’

‘OK.’

‘I asked you to go home that night but you insisted on following me. I was trying to avoid this.’

‘You make me sound like such a creep. Following you around.’

‘I just mean that it’s best you don’t any more.’

‘Right.’

‘So I’m going to go back in now and enjoy the rest of my wedding day.’

‘But—’

‘No,’ she said, ‘that’s the end,’ and she turned away from me to go back to him.

‘Emily?’ I said, when she was at the door.

She turned around. ‘What?’

‘How do you do it?’

‘Do what?’

‘How do you fuck him, Emily?’

She held up her hand between us and went inside.

*

But it was only the end if I agreed it was the end, and it wasn’t much more than half an hour’s walk back to their street in Holland Park. Enough time for me to cool down, and enough time for me to heat up. It would have been so easy for them if I walked away, so easy for me to stop existing. Even though I had imagined them so thoroughly, even though I could close my eyes and see them in front of me, show them the places where they were transparent. They would never get to know how wrong they were about me, how refined my perceptions really were. I would think of them and they would not think of me.

I came up through an underpass into a council estate that turned quickly into the townhouses of Holland Park. I slowed my pace now as I walked past those house fronts iced like wedding cakes in thick white stucco. The traffic noise was receding into the distance; but even on a Saturday builders were converting attics and calling to each other from scaffolding.