“You’ve got to come,” Doug had insisted on the telephone. “We never see you these days.” On the evening of the party I took a taxi to the address he’d given me. I knocked on the door and took a deep breath. Doug answered. He put his arms around me and squeezed me tight. “How are you?” asked Marion, as I entered the kitchen. It was hard to judge whether this was an invitation to tell her how I was coping without Larsen, or just the standard British pleasantry, to which the response “Fine. And you?” would prompt another “Fine,” and allow her to get her drink and go back into the living room. “Oh, fine,” I said, watching her. Something about Marion’s face told me that she had rather hoped I wasn’t fine at all. She was the sort of person who would slow right down to look at a car crash. “Drink?” she said. She tipped a three litre wine box onto its side and squelched the remains out of the silver paper and into two glasses. “So,” she said, finally, “How's things between you and Larsen?”
