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thanks.’
    ‘Okay, enough of the compliments.’ He was looking at me keenly now, as though peering through layers of time. ‘How are you?’ It wasn’t a throwaway line but there was no time to give the answer it required.
    ‘Fine, thanks. Yes. And you?’
    He said yes, good, and I noticed how one hand strayed up to the back of his neck as he contemplated what came next, that old gesture.
    ‘It’s great to see you.’ He stepped forward then and lightly kissed my cheek, one hand grazing the small of my back.
    Then Dan called from the kitchen, ‘Get the fuck down here, Fitz, before this food is incinerated,’ and we laughed, relieved.
    Over more wine and spare ribs that Martin heaped onto a plate in front of us, we exchanged information. I discovered that Fitz lived in Finsbury Park, in a flat that was small, cheap, and comfortable; that he had an allotment and still loves cooking, and had once thought about opening a restaurant; that instead he’d found work as a learning mentor in a behaviour-support unit, and had got used to being sworn at by angry, sad kids; that when it wasn’t filthy weather he cycled to work. He didn’t mention the woman in Cornwall. I asked was he still into music and he told me he’d never got rid of a single piece of vinyl, that his collection lined three walls of one room.
    ‘You’ll be like one of those nerds who has to reinforce the floor soon,’ Dan said. ‘And then you’ll start making lists, like the guy in
High Fidelity
.’
    ‘John Cusack,’ I said. ‘I love that film. I’ve seen it three times.’
    ‘That guy is Fitz to a T.’
    ‘Well, it would be, if I was twenty years younger and had a stunning girlfriend like…what was her name?’
    ‘It’s Danish, unpronounceable,’ Dan said.
    I was trying to picture the two of them from before, and got an image of Fitz mending Dan’s bike in the yard, patiently answering a hundred and one questions from the young cousin who worshipped him.
    ‘How’s your mum?’ Fitz asked him.
    ‘Oh, fine, you know, still worrying about us all, but when she stops, that’s when we’ll start to worry about her.’
    ‘She’ll be missing your dad.’
    ‘Yeah, cat and dog and all that but they loved each other really.’
    Dan poured some more wine in both our glasses.
    ‘How’s your tribe?’ he asked Fitz.
    ‘All okay, as far as I know. Marie’s pregnant again.’
    ‘Christ, that’s four, isn’t it? Is she trying to outdo your mother?’
    ‘My mum thinks she’s mad — can’t understand why she wants any more. Says these days there’s no need. Marie gets the hump on then, as though Mum thinks it was a mistake.’
    After a pause Dan said, ‘Was it?’ Fitz shrugged, and they both laughed.
    The wine was going to my head, so that when Dan got up to help Martin I was seized with the desire to ask Fitz the questions that really mattered. How much did you miss me? How long did it take to get over me?
    I said, ‘I never saw Alex again, you know.’
    His head shot up. ‘Never? She never got in touch?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘But I thought she—’ He broke off, with a deep frown on his face. ‘I mean, you two were so close, I always assumed she would contact you somehow.’
    ‘It wouldn’t have been hard to find me, if she’d really wanted to.’
    Dan placed a dish of kebabs on the table. ‘Have you tried Googling her name?’
    ‘No.’ I looked up at him, surprised that I never had, it was so obvious. ‘But, if what she wanted was to be invisible she wouldn’t exactly advertise herself, would she?’
    He shrugged. ‘It’s not always in someone’s control. Names get onto the web in all sorts of weird ways.’ He went back to the barbecue. ‘Worth a try.’
    ‘It’s a common name,’ Fitz said, to me. ‘There could be hundreds of entries.’
    ‘Yes. Well… I’m not sure. We didn’t part on the best of terms, did we?’
    He was about to say something, then stopped, changed his mind. Dan and Martin sat down, passed