They had left Soho House at 2 a.m., apparently the last people there as the management frantically tried to close the place up for the night. The group of fruity young men who had been pestering them all night had gone in one direction, living as they all did in north and east London, and Jem and Lulu went in the other direction. They walked for an hour, trying and failing to locate a cab. They walked, in fact, all the way to Vauxhall Bridge, where they stood for a while on the side of the bridge admiring the lights on the thick black water of the Thames below and sharing a spliff that one of the fruity young men had given them as a parting gift. On the other side of Vauxhall Bridge, two men had approached them. One was Joel, the other was (despite Jem drunkenly insinuating that he was actually a rent boy that Joel had picked up from under the arches at Charing Cross) Joel’s son, Lucas. “The most beautiful man I have ever seen in my life,” said Lulu. “Crazy beautiful. Brown skin.
