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other night. Now I hardly see him. He has other friends – ‘art friends’, ‘contacts’ – these days.
    Walking in, it wasn’t yet dark and I felt shifty and awkward. I pulled up the hood of my coat. I expected to turn a corner and run into Peter from work or Simon or Clare or Allan. I expected to run into some wrong-turn of conversation, leading to why I’d not been in and how I’d been ‘under the weather’ or ‘not feeling up to things, recently’, and what’s been going on in the office, and when I’ll be back, etcetera.
    I’d shuffle around and look at the floor and lie at them until they’d gone.
    Or worse, my boss. Prowling the streets, with my number set to speed dial.
    I’ll not get a reference now.
    I get there late. Will’s sat in a booth at the back. He’s opposite a girl. They’re holding hands across the table. When he sees me, he waves. She turns round in her seat. She’s blonde. Her face is pointed and flickering in the candlelight. She looks nice. She smiles at me.
    Will gets up. We shake hands. With his free hand he claps me on the back. He has stolen this gesture from somewhere; I’ve not seen it before. His grip is strong, like someone’s dad’s. One of my fingers pops loudly at the knuckle.
    Will tries out new personality traits.
    I don’t think he knows he’s even doing it.
    For a few months last year he took to holding cigarettes between the second and third fingers of his left hand.
    â€˜William, this is Katrina.’
    â€˜Hello,’ she says to me, sounding shy, possibly East-European.
    She’s very pretty. Smooth skin, straight hair, her eyes a greeny-blue colour.
    â€˜And Katrina, this is my good friend, William.’
    I curl my mouth into a smiling shape. I nod my head as if I’m agreeing with something. Katrina. I have nothing to say.
    â€˜Sit down, sit down,’ he says. ‘I’ll get the drinks.’
    He leaves us alone.
    I pull up a chair and wait for her to say the first thing.
    The next table over, someone starts telling a long involved joke.
    â€˜So …’ says Katrina. ‘Will doesn’t tell me what you do.’
    I look over. Leant across the bar, he’s saying something directly into the barman’s ear, his shirt hanging out from under his jacket. If I dressed like that, I’d just look a mess. But somehow Will makes himself look stylishly dishevelled; purposefully ‘artistic’. I wonder if he spends time in front of the mirror messing up his clothes and buttoning his shirt in the wrong holes.
    â€˜I’m … unemployed,’ I say.
    â€˜Oh,’ says Katrina.
    â€˜I just quit my job.’
    The joke reaches its punch line and the people at the next table begin to laugh.
    â€˜You quit your job?’
    â€˜Yep.’
    â€˜Why?’
    Will sits back down. He puts a pint of lager in front of me. For him and Katrina, a second bottle of red wine. He starts to refill their glasses.
    â€˜I was just telling Katrina here that I quit my job.’
    Will stops pouring the wine and stands the bottle on the table.
    â€˜You quit your job?’
    â€˜Yep.’
    â€˜Why?’
    I take a big swig of my pint. On the walk over, I was planning on telling him some sort of elaborate lie. But instead I decide on the truth. I begin to tell him – to tell them both – how trapped and panicked I was feeling. About how sometimes I would go into cold sweats at the bus stop. How I have a bit of money saved up and how I don’t feel like I can fill out one more monotonous form or enter another ream of data into a spreadsheet or type up another six-page report for a very long time. I tell them I plan to reduce the things in my life, to find the small essential elements in it and just focus on those for a while. Finally, I tell them – as clichéd as it sounds – that I want to ‘start again from