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Rick.
    In spite of the fact that Rebecca was its advocate, this idea had originated with me. Rebecca was pregnant at the time and was peculiarly malleable and open to the wildest suggestions.
    ‘I don’t want to live in a flat,’ said Rebecca. ‘In Michael’s flat people walk all over the ceiling. At night it’s like sleeping in a grave with people walking all over it.’
    ‘Tell them to fucking shut up then,’ said Rick. ‘Tell them to take their fucking shoes off or you’ll call the police.’
    ‘I think they’re doctors or something,’ said Rebecca. ‘They have these alarms that go off all night.’
    ‘They’re doctors,’ I confirmed.
    ‘Why don’t you do what anyone normal would do,’ said Rick, ‘and move house? Move around the corner. Move out of earshot. Give the doctors some elbow room. Don’t move to a fucking village.’
    ‘I want a garden,’ said Rebecca.
    ‘Why do you want a garden? So you can grow a fucking carrot? So you can sit there and eat carrot stew in some Jew-hating village –’
    ‘Oh, come on,’ said Rebecca.
    ‘He’s not exaggerating, you guys,’ said Ali over the noise, in her empty, pacific voice that always seemed to float like a lifeboat on the surface of a conversational tumult. ‘People in the countryside are actually really racist. Especially against Jews.’
    ‘I’m not Jewish,’ said Rebecca. ‘I’m not anything.’
    I started to tell them about Doniford and the Hanburys, which was the blueprint I had in mind for our move to the countryside, but unfortunately they were now locked in debate about whether Rebecca was Jewish or not.
    ‘I think you’re really uptight,’ said Ali. ‘It really worries me that you’re so uptight.’
    ‘I don’t have to be something just because you say I am,’ said Rebecca.
    ‘What about your grandmother?’ said Rick. ‘What about what she went through? Did she go through that for you to go and live in some village with Miss Marple?’
    ‘She was Catholic,’ said Rebecca. ‘She was baptised. At least I’m not talking about living a lie.’
    ‘That’s not fair,’ said Ali, shaking her head.
    ‘Anyway,’ said Rebecca, ‘Michael isn’t Jewish. Our children won’t be Jewish.’
    ‘Did we ever say anything about that?’ demanded Rick, holding up his large white hands. ‘Tell me, did we ever say one thing about that?’
    ‘What’s so great about this big bourgeois dolls’ house anyway?’ exploded Rebecca, finally returning to the point. ‘Allpeople do here is go shopping! All they care about is renovating their houses so they can pretend they live in the past! If you took their little museums away from them they’d be as racist as anyone else –’
    ‘Look,’ said Ali, laying one hand on my arm and the other on Rebecca’s. ‘Look, what you two need is a gorgeous little Georgian terrace with lots of light and some original features, and I promise you you’ll feel completely different.’
    Ali often took this route in conversation, of recommending as a panacea the very thing by which you claimed to be being tormented.
    ‘We can’t afford that,’ said Rebecca sullenly.
    ‘Have Nimrod Street,’ shrugged Ali.
    ‘You’ve got tenants in there.’
    ‘Have it.’
    ‘In fact, darling, they’re leaving anyway,’ said Rick agreeably, with the distinctive accord the Alexanders always found in such moments.
    ‘Have it,’ said Ali again, dramatically, as though this were grist to her mill.
    ‘Hey!’ wailed Rebecca’s brother Marco, who was listening. ‘That’s not fair!’
    Marco was in his last year of the sixth form at a boys’ school in the city. He was a big, thick-fleshed boy with black hair that stood out in wild curls all over his head, and a sallow, pitted face on which he perpetually wore an expression of soporific surprise. Whenever I saw him I was reminded not of myself at his age, but of other people at that time who I’d seen but one way and another never got to know.
    ‘Look,’