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grabbing Caroline’s hand.
    â€˜What are you doing? We’ve got two stops to go yet.’ She shook herself free from his grip.
    He felt his face go hot and red; he hadn’t blushed in years. It made him feel young, and silly, and embarrassed. For a moment he disliked so much that she’d made him feel this way that he found himself disliking her. It was a new feeling, sharp and nasty, and he wanted to shake it as far away from himself as possible.
    They were going to his place, a smart flat to the east—Caroline’s was a smart flat in the south-west—and as they came out from the Underground a car flicked on its headlights, dazzling them both for a second so that they fumbled for each other’s hand, warm and steadying. His eyes flared with the bright shapes left behind, and he breathed out, felt better.
    â€˜It was a nice night, Caro.’
    â€˜It was,’ she said. ‘Your friends are nice.’
    It had never occurred to him that she didn’t think of them as her friends too. Dan felt a shiver of cold, and exaggerated it, shaking his shoulders with a cartoon noise.
    â€˜Brr, what’s that thing about a goose walking over your grave?’
    â€˜Well, it’s a cold night,’ said Caroline, sharp again. ‘Must be time for you to complain about how cold your birthday is on this side of the world. You’ve only got a few minutes left before it’s not your birthday anymore— or not in Greenwich Mean Time.’ And although she smiled, she pulled away from him, shuffling her hands into her pockets.
    Inside the flat, he let the door click shut behind them and crossed the room in the darkness, pulling up the blinds that had obscured the view of the river, the city, the lights.
    â€˜I brought you cake,’ said Caroline suddenly. ‘I dropped it in this afternoon—it’s in the fridge. And there are candles. Do you want me to fix it for you? I can make some tea.’
    Dan squinted as yellow light spilled from the open fridge. He sometimes felt uneasy when she’d been in his flat without him, although he had nothing to hide.
    â€˜No, no, you stay there—I’ll bring it in.’
    It was a gorgeous cake, rich and chocolatey, and iced on top with a blue-green globe of the world, Australia at its centre.
    â€˜You’re lovely, Caro,’ he said, swiping a little of the chocolate from the edge and licking his finger. ‘I like the decoration.’
    â€˜Had it done specially for you.’ He heard her shoes thud onto the carpet, one after the other. ‘It seemed appropriate.’
    The candlelight made their shadows bounce on the walls as he carried the cake across the room. They sat side by side on the floor, the cake and its tiny spots of light, then the view and its larger ones through the window. Neither spoke as they cut and ate, licked their fingers and drank their tea.
    Finally she said, ‘There’s a message on your machine. Charlie rang when I was here with the cake, but I didn’t like to pick it up.’
    â€˜Charlie,’ said Dan. ‘She never forgets a birthday.’ On one of Dan’s walls was a huge print of Sydney’s harbour that Charlie had taken, all blue water and golden light. Caro and Dan turned to look at it at the same time.
    â€˜You know, for ages I thought she was your sister,’ said Caro, and Dan shrugged.
    â€˜So did I, when we were little.’ For years, it seemed, he’d not been sure if they were related or not. She was the closest thing he had to a sister, and her grandfather the closest thing he had to one of those as well. Like patchwork, as Gramps liked to say, these people without enough people around them: Charlie had needed a mother and a sibling, and there were Dan and his mum on the other side of the flimsiest of fences. ‘Meant to be,’ said Gramps. Four palings knocked down and the union was achieved; the kids were only four or five at