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felt entirely right.’ David scanned his friend’s face for a hidden meaning. ‘Are you implying it was too soon – after Nina?’
    ‘No,’ Oliver shook his head, emphatically, maybe awkwardly. ‘No no no. Of course not. It’s more that Rachel is so, well, different to your usual girlfriends.’
    ‘You mean she’s working class.’
    ‘No, I mean she’s underclass. You do know where she came from?’
    ‘The rookeries of Plumstead. The favelas of Tooting Bec. What does it matter?’
    ‘It doesn’t, not really. It’s more that it’s such a
leap
. She’s so very different to Nina. I mean she looks similar, that elfin face, that gamine quality you always go for, but in every other way—’
    ‘But that’s the point.’ David leaned forward. ‘That’s one of the reasons I fell in love with Rachel, so quickly. She’s
different.
’ He was talking slightly too loudly now, his talk fuelled by wine. But he didn’t care. ‘All those nice girls from Notting Hill, from Paris and Manhattan – Rachel is superbly different to all that. She’s had experiences I can’t imagine. She has opinions I never hear, she has ideas I could never expect, she is also a
survivor
, she’s been through serious shit, yet come out of it intact, intelligent, funny.’ He paused. ‘And, yes, she is sexy.’
    The table was silenced. David wanted to say
: She’s almost as sexy as Nina, she’s the only woman I’ve met who might actually one day compare to Nina
, but he didn’t. Because he didn’t want to think about Nina. Instead he ordered two Tokays.
    Oliver smiled affably. ‘I suppose you and Rachel have also got things in common.’
    ‘You mean both our fathers were bastards, and we’re both clearly and ridiculously impulsive.’
    ‘No, I was thinking that – you’re both a little fucked up.’
    ‘Ah.’ David laughed. ‘Yes. Possibly the case. But damaged girls are better in bed.’
    ‘Sweet.’
    ‘Though the same surely applies to men. Maybe that’s why I was good at womanizing. I’ve got issues.’ David looked across the restaurant at a young family. At a laughing child, happy with his parents. His words came as a reflex. ‘God, I miss Jamie.’
    Oliver offered a sympathetic smile. David summoned the waiter, and asked for the bill. Their wine glasses glittered subtly in the low restaurant light.
    Oliver sat back. ‘Is it worse, missing kids? Worse than missing girlfriends, or partners? I wouldn’t know.’
    David shook his head. ‘Trust me. It’s worse. And the worst of it is, there’s nothing you can do. Even when you do have a nice time with your kids, it makes you regret how you should have done more of the same in the past. Having a kid is like an industrial revolution of the emotions. Suddenly you can mass produce worry, and guilt.’
    ‘Well, at least you’ll see him tonight.’
    David brightened. ‘I will. It’s the weekend. Thank God.’
    The lunch over, they wandered out into a bright, soft afternoon, into London at its most benign: the plane trees of Piccadilly caging the city sunlight in softening green. Shaking hands, and slapping backs, Oliver walked off to St James and David headed the other way, tipsily grabbing a cab to his office in Marylebone, picking up his weekend case, and then taking the same taxi, for Heathrow.
    But as the traffic stalled through Hammersmith, the good buzz of the booze began to ebb. The bad thoughts came back, the wearying yet unavoidable anxieties.
    Jamie. His beloved son.
    It wasn’t just that he missed Jamie: it was the fact that the boy was behaving strangely, again. Not as badly as the first terrible months after Nina’s funeral, but there was definitely something amiss. And it was seriously dismaying. David had hoped that bringing Rachel to Carnhallow would mark a new chapter in their lives, would definitively draw an emotional line under it all, let them move into the brighter light of the future, but that hadn’t happened. Jamie was, if anything,