Spike was the only red-meat eater among us so the rest of us had to search through the Malvinas Hermanos menu for chicken, fish and vegetarian alternatives. When we had phoned it in, Spike wanted to continue his guitar lesson.

Tara shot me a warning look.

‘A bit late, mate,’ I said. ‘Some other time.’

Spike looked at Tara and then back at me.

‘Show me then,’ he urged. ‘You do it.’

I put on the Fender, turned down the volume on the practice amp to one and hit the A chord three times. It sounded like the opening riff to ‘Highway to Hell’ played in a library.

Tara lifted her chin. ‘A bit late, darling,’ she said sweetly.

In the secret language of our marriage, Tara only called me darling when she was right on the edge of being really angry with me. I reluctantly slipped Highway to Hell back into its place on the shelf with all the As. I would have liked to have put it on really loud. I hadn’t heard that record for years.

A red-wine stupor settled on us as we waited for our dinner.

The album that Ginger had put on – Blue by Joni Mitchell – had stopped some time ago. Marlon was finally in bed. Buddy sighed in his sleep. It did not seem appropriate to put anything else on. Because Tara was talking, dry-eyed, about her father. Not about prison. Not about his crime. She spoke of Leo’s illness and about the choice he had made to let the cancer take its course.

‘Whatever they do – surgery, radiation – there are risks of side effects. The kind of side effects that my dad will not contemplate. And so he does nothing, and that comes with a risk too – the risk of dying.’

‘I’d do the same,’ Spike said, full of red-wine bravado. ‘Incontinence? Impotence? Sod that lot for a game of soldiers!’

Tara was unimpressed. ‘It’s really easy to say, Spike. Hard to do. Talk is cheap. To know there are things you could do, and then choose to take your chances with the cancer.’

Ginger abruptly stood up, and fled the room in tears.

‘What’s she upset about?’ Spike said, his face darkening, and I saw that he knew that his wife had been with Leo. Somewhere somehow – and probably not very long ago – Ginger had told him about her affair. Or he had guessed. Or he had pushed her into a confession after all those bitter tears at the trial.

‘Shouldn’t that food be here by now?’ I said, changing the subject. ‘It’s been over an hour.’

Spike looked at his phone, suddenly furious. I don’t know how much of his anger was about his delayed steak and how much was about his wife going to bed with the father of her best friend. But as Spike got on the phone to the delivery service, there were the sudden lights and the insect buzz of a scooter on the street.