Apart from all that though, the evening had been good. Callum’s blokey banter was sometimes hard to adjust to, and where he led Mike followed, but it was good to see them all again and remember he’d had a life before Sweden, before Astrid. It was as if he was groping his way along, trying to find the Bill who’d turned up at Oxford aged eighteen, with two pairs of jeans, one pair of trainers, a tin of rolling tobacco and not much else. Bill, the name he’d chosen for himself, shelving the Bilal he’d grown up with on the coach journey down. He’d struggled to explain to his mother that he needed a new name for Oxford. That no one meant to be racist, not exactly; it was more that they’d grown up only seeing non-white faces cleaning their houses or serving in corner shops. Now his mother was dead, no one ever called him by his real name.

He was glad he’d come, yes, but all the same he’d felt the need for some time out after dinner. Smoking was very useful for that, an excuse to wander away when a conversation got too much. After he’d gone to see if Ali needed help – he was surprised at how anxious she’d been to have everything in order, a plate at each place and a bowl to sit on top of it, a tumbler and wine glass and napkin and cutlery; Ali who used to eat pasta and pesto out of a saucepan on the floor of the communal hallway in college – he ambled down the garden. Part of him was kicking himself for the awkward moment in the kitchen. Stupid, to think they could go back to their old friendship, after so long. When he’d touched her arm, he’d seen the alarm in her eyes, and wanted to explain he hadn’t meant – but he didn’t know what he had or hadn’t meant.

Outside on the decking, the night air was cool. The candles Mike had lit were out, and he and Callum sat in darkness, only the sounds of their voices showing anyone was there. Bill was pleased, though he couldn’t have said why, that he liked Ali’s house. It was a little shabby round the edges, the garden overgrown and full of flowers, foxgloves, night-scented stock, hyacinth, but in a way that seemed organic and not planned. He liked the way the trees formed an arch over the garden, and the cries of birds drifted down. Earlier, when showing them round it, all Ali could do was apologise for the pile of garden waste behind the shed, and it made him sad to think she couldn’t enjoy this small paradise she lived in.