A PRIVATE PARTY

On the gate which separates Monty’s garden from the rest of London, a note hangs from a piece of string looped around one of those elaborate iron whorls. It has been hastily written – that much is apparent in the hand, which slopes downwards and grows larger as it progresses across the paper; in the improvised way the two holes accommodating the string have been punctured with a pen nib, leaving inky trickles of evidence. Despite its unattractive appearance, however, it proves an intriguing note, to those it was not intended for. A number of times already today, passers-by have paused to read its words, to puzzle over them, to imbue them with invented meaning. Some hours ago, a lady walking a small black poodle had lingered there for minutes on end, wishing it was clearer, longing to follow its clues towards some naughty adventure or other. She’d read about the Bright Young People. Incidentally, she’d whispered about them with a luncheon companion only yesterday: she had been seeking them for months, hoping to secure an invitation. Gentlemen, too, have stopped to scan the message, some deciding it a silly love riddle and moving on with a grin or a tut, others checking about themselves for onlookers before turning it over in their hands, seeking more information. But none of these passers-by can make any real sense of the thing. This note on a gate in a London street, though seen by many, belongs to only a select few. It reads:

M, G, H and J,
You are all, without the most miniscule of doubts, some of the most idiotic people I have ever had the pleasure of knowing.
You could create a drama in a nunnery.
Now, kindly convey yourselves to the house. I’m expecting you.
I’ll provide refreshments, but only if you’re good!
M T-W

Matilda, appropriately enough since hers is the first initial, is the first to happen upon it. She does not stop to give it a second read. She turns, as instructed, and makes her way directly to Monty’s house, the address of which she knows by heart, of course, from the back of those parchment paper invitations.

She finds the place just as grand as she had expected. She understands then why Monty doesn’t invite just any friend back here: to show anyone this much wealth, you’d need to trust them completely. It is a townhouse set over five storeys, and, when she tilts back her head to take in the full scale of it, she finds her neck aching with the strain of sending her eyes right to the top. It rises forever, this house. It frowns down at you. At street level, two Corinthian columns guard a black front door, set amongst panels of glass. Above that, on the upper four floors, the stretch of smooth white paint is interrupted by windows lined up in triplicate, which glow orange in the sinking twilight and open onto neat white-balustraded balconies. Number 8, Matilda thinks, is stacked up like the tiers of a royal wedding cake. And so naturally does the image sit in her mind that when she approaches the door and lifts the knocker, she almost expects it to yield to her touch, as sugared icing would.

The door is opened by a footman, as tall as he is young, who stands puffed with pride in his white shirt and dicky bow, and instantly Matilda loses her words. Why is she here? She can’t be sure. Her mouth opens, eager to fill the silence, but she finds no explanation. Thankfully, a breath or two later, the footman comes to her assistance.

‘Mrs Steck?’ he ventures.

‘Yes!’ Matilda replies, too loud. ‘Sorry. Yes. How did you know?’

‘It’s a private party,’ the boy smiles, stepping backwards to usher her inside. ‘We’re expecting just one lady guest this evening. Please,’ he continues, ‘allow me to show you through to Mr Thornton-Wells.’

Henry and Jack are walking through their city, roughly ten counted strides apart, burdened by piles of stuffed-full bags. Jack is ahead, limping heavily but trying hard not to. Already his bruises have ripened, mapping the right side of his face with three colourful new continents. He is scattered all over with scrapes and lumps and splinters of split skin. Back at the flat, Henry had attempted to clean his wounds, but with access only to cold water and a cloth, he had not made a great job of it. In the fading light, Jack is pitiful.

Behind him, Henry moves in half-steps, not wanting to rush him along. Moving slowly makes it easier, in any case, to be watchful of his surroundings. He is hyper-alert now: in soldier mode again. It was easier than he’d imagined it might be to snap back, to glance down a street and calculate the number of people on it, the quickest route off it, the length of time it might take to march down it. He knows, for instance, that presently there are nine people within range of a rifle: two couples, married he decides, who strut arm in arm, their feet precisely matched; a line of three men, each of them smaller than both Henry and Jack, who are likely on their way for an after-work tipple; a lone man, who fairly clips along, a rolled newspaper held in one hand and a cane he doesn’t seem to need in the other; and, nearest to them and travelling nearer, a lady in her early fifties, Henry would estimate, who keeps her silvering head low as she whistles her way home, or away from home. Henry plots them all on his mind like constellations of stars: those closest to him, the greatest threats, burn brighter than the rest.

He clears his throat, once, significantly – the ridiculous code they have concocted. Jack answers by echoing the sound. A single cough means he is all right, he can carry on. Two would mean he was struggling, he might have to stop. Three – the emergency cough – was to be used if and when Jack felt under threat. Henry considers now that the order should perhaps have been reversed. In the case of an emergency, Jack might not have time to discharge the rapid tripartite Henry has forced him to agree to.

He sneaks a glimpse at Libby, tucked into the pram he pushes, her snub-nose reddened to a slight glow in the chilling air, her round eyes sparking at him. They are like worlds, this little girl’s eyes. They are like deep dark worlds. They had smiled at Viv when they had said their goodbyes, exactly as her mother’s would have.

Henry had hoped to spend more time with Viv and Herb. He’d wanted to set Libby down on the floor of their flat and murmur through some purposeless conversation as she crawled about, dragging her blanket and easy joy in her wake. He’d wanted her to make Herb smile one more time, for Viv’s sake. But they had had to rush, he and Jack. They have not spoken yet about what really happened in Pentonville, but what choice did they have but to move fast? After all, it seems Matilda only tricked the police into releasing him. They might realise the deception, want their revenge. Someone else, spurred on by her apparent bravery, might make an accusation of their own. Either way, Bayswater Road does not feel safe any more, and so he had been forced to leave Viv with nothing more than an embrace.

‘You’ll write me, won’t you?’ she’d said, holding on tight to the tears in her eyes. ‘You’ll let me know where you end up?’

‘Of course I will,’ Henry had answered, folding his arms around her. ‘Of course I will. I promise.’ Then he’d kissed her cheek, shaken hands with Herb, locked up 101a Bayswater Road for the final time and walked away.

And now here he is, trailing Jack across London, armed with nothing much more than a vague plan, a bundle of clothes and his family. He touches a tentative hand to the back of his neck. His anxiety is a dull pain which pulls at his brain, pulse-like, making clear thinking impossible. But this much he knows: he is walking towards his future. That is what he needs to tell Ruby, what he has to explain to her, what he hopes she can forgive him for. That is the sentiment he’ll be carrying when he visits her grave for the very first time. And, God, he hopes there will be flowers, deposited by some kindly hand before the stone on which her name is written, because he cannot stand to look down and remember the way he last saw that square of ground – opened to the sky and too many eyes and his wife. He cannot stand it.

Darkness drops like an anchor. And luckily so, for they need something to hold them in place, this eddying collection of people. They are strewn about the room as though deposited there by an accidental tide. Monty stands before the double windows, smiling through closed lips, an untouched drink held up on an idle wrist. Matilda perches on a chair edge, her head lost in her hands. Across the room, sharing a two-seater settee, Jack and Grayson look in opposite directions, one man biting at a thumbnail, the other sucking furiously on a cigarette. On the rug in the centre of the floor, Sally Emory crosses and uncrosses her ankles, straining not to reach out and touch Libby, who has been set to sleep there. And Henry, back to a shut door, watches them. He watches them, and he finds, in the spaces between the words they are shoving back and forth, his decision. The letter he will write later, to Ida, gathers in his mind as insistently as storm clouds, the words finding their own unstoppable way together.

‘You won’t stay?’ Matilda asks. ‘Not even … Not for anything?’

Henry shakes his head. No.

‘But –’

‘Tilda,’ Grayson warns. They can feel, all of them, that she is about to start begging. They can feel it, and they are embarrassed by it. But Matilda does not care one jot for their embarrassment. She is facing a future devoid of this man and this child, and despite her best intentions, she cannot deny that the pain of it is already at her stomach, gnawing deep. Ahead of her stretches the rest of a suddenly empty life, during which she will never again sit opposite Henry to a meal while he and her husband drink and laugh and drink; never again lift Libby to her shoulder and know that smell she has, like the heat of sun on stone, present in her nose. She cannot conceive now of why she had needed more when she could have had, and continued to have all those things, those wonderful things, those real things. She could have taught that little girl just how incredible her mother had been; she could have helped to raise her, in her own way. Why, then, had she had to push? Why had she been so greedy? She is aware of the reason. She is aware of it though she wishes she weren’t. She, Matilda Steck, is selfish – she always has been.

‘You can’t stay where you’re not welcome,’ Jack says, his words gentle. Henry has implored him to remain composed, just through this one last night with these people, just so that they can stay off the streets until morning. And Jack is trying, hard.

‘But you are welcome here,’ Matilda returns, deliberately misunderstanding. ‘Hasn’t Monty said so? Haven’t you, Montague? You want them to stay, don’t you? Don’t you?’

Monty responds at his leisure. He’s enjoying this: the heartbreak, the tension. ‘I’ve said so,’ he answers.

‘But not everywhere,’ Henry says. ‘We’re not welcome everywhere. We never will be.’

‘You don’t know that!’ Matilda almost wails.

Henry growls back at her, his voice low but rough. ‘You’ve proved that.’

‘Well, I’m sorry, I’m sorry I –’ She stops when Sally adjusts her ankles again and the movement catches her eye. She cannot look at the girl without feeling physically sick. How can she, knowing what she now knows, having noticed what she has noticed? She cannot believe Grayson was so ignorant as to think that she, Matilda Steck, barren Matilda Steck, would not sniff out a pregnant woman. She would be the country’s most successful detective, if the only suspects she had to seek were expectant mothers. ‘I was trying to help.’

‘Who?’ Henry asks.

‘You.’

‘Me, or yourself?’ he mutters, blushing at the words. They have never acknowledged her feelings this way: verbally, soberly. Not Henry or Grayson or even Matilda. Doing so now makes them feel like she is standing in the middle of the room howling ‘But I loved you’. Each of them, excepting Monty, stares at the polish of the floorboards, listening to the silent rumour of that awful, beautiful sentiment, caught on the air.

Sometimes, Henry wonders whether he should have spoken those words to his parents, whether he’d have grown into a better man if they had ever spoken them to him. But, no – the idea is a wasted one. The last time Henry saw his father he was slumped on the front doorstep of their home, spittle hanging like slung ropes from his lips to his chest, his shoulders crumbling into the sleeves of his shirt, one foot removed from its shoe, one knee drooling streamers of blood down the length of a bony shin. Henry had extricated him from a street brawl that night. He’d been rewarded with a blow to his left temple, delivered by a hand near-identical to his own: that he had accepted. When the old man had drawn a knife, though, and started sculpting the dark with it, Henry had been forced to show his father just how much strength he had acquired since his boyhood.

Later, Henry said goodbye to him without being heard, while he slept off the lesson his son’s fists had taught him, and in truth, he does not know for sure now if the old man is alive or dead. He suspects, however – and he accepted the suspicion as fact a number of years since – that the bloody fool drank himself to death. Remarkably, the only comfort Henry can pull from this is that the news of he and Jack will not reach Alfred Twist. Never will he have to begin an unresolvable argument with the man he always hoped for, even through that final fight.

In Monty’s drawing room, there is a shift in the conversation. Somehow, despite his fear, his anger, Henry had managed to mute the exchanges crisscrossing him for a minute or two. Monty’s voice finds a way to reinstate his attention.

‘I suggest a game,’ he says. ‘Wouldn’t a game ease the mood, friends? Don’t you think?’ He steps towards Sally and Libby, so that he is standing at the heart of the gathering, pivotal – the position where he is most content. The suggestion is ridiculous enough to silence them. ‘How about poker? Just a couple of silly hands, no money? Anyone?’

Grayson, eager to soften the encounter, responds first to the invitation.

‘If not money,’ he enquires, his lips spilling cigarette smoke, ‘what will we play for?’

‘Ah,’ Monty smiles. ‘How about truths?’

‘Truths?’ Jack asks, and Monty smiles wider.

‘What else is there?’

They allow themselves to be ushered into a room which Monty has surely had designed as a gambling den. At the room’s middle, beneath a five-armed chandelier and atop a woven circular rug, there sits an enormous round table, already laid with playing cards. The remainder of the space is largely empty: there is an alcove piled with books, the battered spines of which are crammed together at every possible angle; beside it, a leather armchair; and against the opposite wall, a leather settee, a standard lamp and a drinks trolley, its treasures glinting in the candlelight. Henry imagines Monty insists on candlelight only in this room, for the drama of it, for the added tension a flame made to stutter by quickening breath would create.

They take the places Monty allocates them in near silence, uttering occasional words of apology as they bump elbows or chair legs. He does not organise them accidentally – Henry sees that right away. He puts Matilda alongside Sally, he sandwiches Grayson between Henry and Jack. As usual, he is playing more than one game.

‘I’ll deal,’ he announces, settling in his own chair, and, like fools, they wait for their hands to be dealt. There is a stretch of time then interrupted only by the shuffling of cards between fingers, of glances over the top of fanned hands, of coughs and sniffs and hums and obdurate looks. Ridiculously, they are nervous. They are sitting to a game of poker, nothing more. But they feel, somehow, that what each of them is playing for is their life.

Sally folds first, hands trembling. She is followed by Jack and Monty and, not far behind them, Matilda. Only Grayson and Henry show their cards. Grayson lays a two pair across the table: two kings, two sevens. Henry trumps it with three of a kind and the slimmest hint of a smile.

‘So,’ Monty says, like a schoolmaster leading an assembly. ‘The truth must be one of yours, Gray.’

Grayson glares at Monty. ‘What do you want me to say?’

Quite why they feel so bound by the rules of this game, Henry cannot fathom. He is aware though that, had the losing hand been his, he would not have refused to reveal his truth. He would not have spoiled the game.

Monty takes a slow sip from his glass, holding the liquid in his mouth for a moment or two before swallowing.

‘How long have you been sleeping with our new friend here?’ he asks, indicating Sally with a flick of his eyes.

‘No,’ Matilda interjects, before Gray has chance to draw a breath. ‘No, I’ve got a better question … How long have you known, husband, that she is carrying your child?’

She chases the question with a slug of red wine. A few droplets of it escape her lips and scatter across her chin, like beads of fresh blood. She dabs them away with a napkin then folds it neatly back onto the table.

Grayson gulps and gulps again, trying to loosen his throat, but still the words, the only small words he can manage, are emitted as tight, knotted things. ‘Not too long,’ he replies.

Though Matilda had been sure from the start, this confirmation of her suspicions is too much and she wretches into her cupped palm, the convulsion starting low in her stomach and rippling all the way up to the back of her neck. She is a bird, regurgitating its hunted food for its young. Except, of course, that the regurgitation is for someone else’s young. Not her own. Never her own. She stands and staggers from the room, her palm still pressed to her mouth, holding in her shame. She slams the door behind her and then she is out in the hallway, invisible to them, and they are listening to her throwing up on the other side of the wall. They are listening to the hot expulsion of her grief. They are listening to something so private that each of them bows their head and stares at the table before them, as though they are engaged in prayer.

One of Monty’s staff approaches. They hear the clip of his footsteps, parroted by the walls. They hear him tell Matilda that she mustn’t worry; he’ll have it cleaned up in no time; she should get back to her friends. And, unbelievably – though not one of them is her friend now, not really and truly, not the way Ruby once was – she does.

She re-enters the room with a straight back and a new, hastily applied sweep of lipstick.

‘I should offer you my congratulations,’ she says, her eyes pressed against Sally’s for the first time. ‘My husband has always wanted to be a father. Evidently the only thing stopping him was me.’

‘Tild –’

‘No,’ she says, putting up her hand to stop him. He is silent, as she wants him to be. ‘It’s true. I mean it. Congratulations, Sally.’

Shamelessly, Sally locks eyes with Matilda when she speaks. She has come here to make her claim, to secure her future with Grayson. She is not returning to school. She cannot. But Grayson will keep her through her pregnancy, she knows it. Matilda, in her stoicism, is almost giving him permission to do so. ‘Thank you, Matilda,’ she says, and the words are sincere. She means to be kind to the woman. After all, she has committed to the hand she now holds for life. She does not want unpleasantness.

‘Right. Of course,’ Matilda continues. ‘Now, we have a game to play, haven’t we Monty dear? That is what you want, isn’t it?’

‘Always,’ Monty replies, apparently not in the least bit discomfited. ‘If there was ever a generation who ought to do nothing but play games, it’s yours. You’ve seen enough seriousness to last a hundred lifetimes.’

‘Do you not imagine it a serious thing,’ Jack puts in, his lips small, his eyes narrowed, ‘to watch a marriage be broken?’

‘Oh, I do, I do,’ Monty answers. ‘But there is nothing so broken within a game, Jack Turner, that it cannot be mended once the game is over. That is the beauty of games. They are for the playing, not for the living.’

Jack looks to Henry, apoplectic, his jaw tense as strung cable. He is seeking permission, Henry realises, to challenge Monty, to argue his point, to cause a fight. Surely he has kept his cool long enough. But Henry shakes his head. No. Because, he thinks he understands now what Montague is doing. He is trying to heal them. He’s going about it in an odd fashion, certainly; he’s getting a little too much enjoyment out of it. Doesn’t he look, in fact, like a man reclining post-coitally, spent, that subtle grin always flitting about his lips, that lethargic lift of his wrist as he brings his glass to his mouth and opens his throat to the liquid? His aim, though, is not to injure them, but to keep them. Or some of them, at least. Henry is sure of it. He’d seen the hurt Monty was made of that night in the garden, when he’d swung back and forth like a child in his swing and told Henry of his decades-old heartbreak. All he wants is not to be left alone. And that is not a wicked want. That is as natural as falling in love, or fearing the dark, or curling your back against the cold cut of the wind. That is as understandable as one man finding comfort with another.

‘Deal another hand,’ Henry says.

‘Really?’ It’s Jack. He hasn’t yet grasped the purpose of the game.

‘Really.’

Henry nods at Monty. And Monty, smiling, nods back. ‘That’s my boy,’ he says, then he squares the pack and readies himself to begin again.

They play until the midnight moon sprays silver beams across the floors, until that same moon dips down the clock towards three, until they are drunk and sober and drunk again, until they cannot tell any longer whether their tears consist of sorrow or amusement or some unnameable mixture of the two. They bump and bruise each other with ugly words. They punish each other with flushes and full houses. They talk their way back towards true, honest friendship.

‘Ooh, Jaa-ack,’ Monty sings. ‘Your turn to spit a truth.’

Jack sits back in his chair and crosses his arms. He grins. ‘I’m always game, Monty.’

‘Indeed. But what to ask? What to ask? … All right, I know … What’s the cruellest thing you’ve ever done?’

‘The cruellest …’ Jack frowns as he thinks on the question. ‘The cruellest …’

‘You’re thinking a long time for a man with no memory,’ Matilda slurs.

‘A man with no memory ought to think longer than a man still in possession of one, don’t you think?’ Jack answers.

Matilda laughs, slow and vicious. The drink has drowned all her good intent. She will not manage this gracefully now. ‘Well, I don’t know. What exactly is it you’re thinking on, if there’s nothing there?’ She taps at her temple.

‘An answer to the question.’

‘Ha! This isn’t a game of fiction, Jack. It’s a game of truth. Do you remember what that means?’

‘Do you?’

She stands and saunters around the table, staggering gently now and then, as though she is aboard a ship and must constantly re-seek her balance. Her left index finger traces a route along the chair backs: a circular trail which will return her only to herself. She’s going to say it. Why shouldn’t she? Henry needs to know. They all need to know. She won’t be the villain in all this. Jack Turner is a criminal, for God’s sake.

‘Tilda,’ Henry says quietly. ‘Why don’t you sit down?’

‘But,’ she replies, still staggering around and around the table, ‘aren’t you interested to know why the police were so willing to lock,’ – she stabs a finger at Jack – ‘him,’ – another stab – ‘up?’

‘I know why.’

‘No, you see, you don’t.’

Henry pushes his palms over his face and speaks into his own hot skin. It is sticky in here. He wants to step outside. ‘Then I don’t need to know.’

‘Yes,’ Jack says, and all eyes drop on him. He is a lone prey animal suddenly, and they are a tight, bristling pack. ‘Yes, since she mentions it, I think you probably do.’

And so he recounts it all – mostly – one woman, one name, one lie at a time. He does not hide his cowardly night-time flits. He does not deny the money, the trust, the hopes he stole and kept for himself. He does not pretend that he was sorry, at the time, for breaking all those hearts. What he neglects to say, though, is that there were men too. That admission would lessen Henry, and he will not have Henry lessened. Never that. The man has lost all Jack will let him lose.

Uninterrupted, Jack talks and talks and talks, laying out all the falsehoods of his life so that Henry can make a map from them and navigate his way to veracity. He talks until his voice dries up and rasps. He talks until he thinks he hears, outside the window, the twinkling fall of birdsong – though he might, he supposes, be wishing for the sound. He needs this night to be finished with. He needs to know whether Henry will still look at him tomorrow the way he is looking at him now. He does not shift his gaze from the other man’s to notice that Monty is nodding and grinning his way appreciatively through every part of his story; or that Sally, exhausted presently by the prospect of her pregnancy, is battling not to soften into sleep; or that Matilda is slumped again in her chair, made empty, empty as the loneliest bed, by the events of the previous months; or that Grayson is dragging at one cigarette after another, suffocating the room with skulking tendrils of smoke.

Grayson is suffocating himself, too. That is his intention. He had arrived at Monty’s front door struggling for breath. Now, at least, he has a reasonable excuse for the affliction. He cannot admit that it was the thought of telling Matilda about Sally which had stolen the air from his lungs.

And that has gone as well as can be expected, hasn’t it? Though he hasn’t actually told Matilda anything: not about his plans or his hopes or his regrets. He has been a coward. And he will continue to be, he supposes. After all, what he wants to happen, what he hopes will happen, is the most cowardly possible outcome.

‘Well,’ Monty sighs, tapping the gathered deck against the table top now that Jack’s tale has trundled its way into silence. ‘Will we risk another hand after that?’

Gray glances at his watch. ‘It’s quarter to four,’ he points out, though he’s not sure why. He has no intention of moving. He does not know where he might go. He knows only this: he wants them to raise the baby together. All of them. The three of them. He has just fully realised it.

‘We should go,’ Henry says.

‘Where?’ Gray asks.

Henry considers Jack a moment, then the baby. ‘I’m not exactly sure yet,’ he says, though he is, isn’t he? Really, he was sure of it in that paused pulse of time when Jack stepped out of Pentonville prison, grinning like a man leaving a party. What comes next, though, is his and Jack’s secret, and he wants to keep it that way for a while.

‘Did you ever have a plan, Henry?’ Grayson asks. ‘I mean … a big life-plan. Did you decide what you wanted years ago?’

‘No,’ Henry answers. ‘Of course not. How could I have ever planned this?’

‘But before this. Before Ruby died.’

Henry shakes his head. ‘Not really.’ He ought to say, not after the war, but he does not. Grayson must understand. He lived it, too.

‘Best way,’ Monty puts in.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Sally begins. Now that they are all drunk enough, she is willing to offer her voice. It has not yet been trampled over. ‘A plan not working out doesn’t mean the plan wasn’t valid. Making the plan is still what brings you to a certain outcome, a certain place.’

‘Wise words from a woman who’s carrying an accidental child,’ Matilda swipes.

‘Isn’t she right, though?’ Monty asks. ‘Isn’t she absolutely spot on? It’s the planning that gets us to wherever we end up, whether we intended it or not. Bravo, young one!’

‘And what did you intend, Monty dear?’ Matilda asks.

‘I intended to enjoy myself.’

‘How is that going?’ Gray laughs.

‘Splendidly,’ Monty answers, though the response is less than convincing. It is late, and he is tired, and it is causing him to grow transparent. Even his eyes, right down to the pupils, are greyed by fear: of growing old, of being alone. They see it, now that the alcohol has stripped them all free of themselves. ‘At my age, people are expected to expect only comfort,’ he says. ‘But I decided to expect more, and I’ve done a bloody good job of getting it, if you ask an old sod like me.’

‘You’ve never done anything the right way, have you Monty?’ Grayson says.

‘I’ve never done anything other people’s way.’ Monty points at Gray as he speaks, his finger and his head ticking to emphasise the gravity of his perspective. ‘But I did things the right way for me.’

‘That’s all any of us can do,’ Jack concludes. Henry can tell by the lilt in his voice that he is mocking them. He wants now to be free of them just as much as Henry does. They need to be alone together, so that they can offer up the new promises they will have to consider and accept or discard.

‘We really do need to go,’ he says.

From her place at the table, Matilda speaks. ‘Why the rush?’ she murmurs. ‘You’re never coming back.’ She does not lift her head to catch anyone’s gaze, but stares out through the window to her left, at the lightening of the sky. Grayson follows her look. There is a frill of grey at the night’s edge, revealing itself like a stocking top. It is an exciting thing, this new day. It is flirtatious. It might lead anywhere at all.

‘No,’ Henry says. ‘You’re right. We’re not.’ He does not look to Jack as he speaks, but he feels Jack watching him.

‘But where will you go?’ Monty enquires. ‘You have to tell us. You simply must.’ Monty, though, is struggling to concentrate on Henry. He can’t keep his eyes off Sally, who may or may not be squirming slightly under the weight of his attentions. She’s a hard one to read, this Sally. Henry shakes his head – that dogged old man! But he will not condemn him. He is trying to keep himself alive, that’s all. He’s just trying to stay alive.

‘Somewhere new,’ Henry says.

‘Lovely,’ Monty answers. ‘That’ll be nice.’

‘Yes.’ Grayson manages to stand and, shoving aside his chair, moves around to press his palm against Henry’s. They clasp each other tight. ‘I suppose it’s good luck, then,’ he says. ‘And I mean that. I really do.’

He wants to say more, Henry can feel it, but he waits until they are drifting towards the front door, all of them, Matilda and Sally carefully avoiding each other, before he steals a second to give voice to his thoughts.

‘I’m well out of my depth here, Twist,’ he whispers, leaning close. ‘What do you suggest? I’ve been thinking about –’

Smiling, Henry holds up a hand to quiet Grayson. ‘A better soul than me told me once that men drive themselves insane with thinking; that it’s better to just do and be and hope for the best.’

‘And that’s what you’re doing,’ Gray concludes.

‘That’s what I’m doing.’

‘But … how? How do you decide what’s –’

‘With your gut, of course,’ Henry says, reiterating Jack’s words exactly. ‘With your gut.’

They stand in a little pack on the doorstep as Henry and Jack step out into the rupturing night, Libby bundled between them. An ethereal scent, like that which rolls over chill water, is suspended on the air. Their breath paints vapour peonies before them. At this hour, the city is curled in on itself like a sleeping cat. They are held within that briefest crotchet beat of rest, when the partygoers have just retired and the workers are on the brink of rising and the only people awake in London are the troubled, the homeless, the misfits. He and Jack, Henry supposes, are all three now.

They stare straight ahead as they walk, so that the people behind them cannot discern the movements of their mouths, read their lips. Their words are murmurations.

‘So, it’s Wales, then,’ Jack says.

‘It’s Wales,’ Henry confirms.

‘Why?’

Henry narrows his eyes, the way he does when he’s planning his next words. Still, Jack thinks; still he cannot just speak freely. Perhaps he never will. ‘Because we’ve both got lives to leave behind,’ he says finally.

‘But, you love this city, Henry. Are you sure?’

At their backs, Monty descends his front steps and shuffles a little way after them. ‘Good luck!’ he calls. ‘Good luck, you handsome buggers!’

Already some strides away, the two men turn, to wave their thanks, to smile their most assured goodbyes, and then they withdraw into the withering darkness and are lost to those other people, those old friends.

‘Henry?’ Jack says again. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Not at all.’

Jack laughs, and Henry, noticing again how easily it loosens his face, hopes silently that he will never stop laughing; that he will never cause him to stop. ‘Me neither,’ Jack says. ‘Let’s do it.’

On the doorstep, the depleted party deflates a little. Monty sighs, loud and unsubtle as a disappointed child. He should have liked to have kept Jack. But the night is over now, and the boy is lost, and really, there is nothing left to do but fold into sleep. In coming together, though, they have denied themselves their usual sleeping arrangements. Grayson cannot go home with Matilda. Sally cannot be expected to slink back to her flat unaccompanied. Grayson will have, finally, to work up the courage to ask the question he’s been orbiting since they arrived. He breathes deep, counting himself into it.

‘Mont –’ he begins.

Monty’s head snaps up, sensing some new to-do. ‘Always,’ he says. And that’s the perfect answer, isn’t it, Gray thinks. Always. Always, Monty is ready to distract himself from the dimming of his own life with the blaze of someone else’s. Always, Monty will find a way to cling to this, the whirling pain and joy and rush of existence.

‘Is there a chance we could stay?’

‘Of course! Why not?’

‘But –’

‘But, all of you? I believe I’ve extended that offer to one new family already. It’s equally open to you and your dears, if you want it. If they want it.’ Monty nods at Matilda, then at Sally. He is brightening again, standing straighter. He likes the idea. He is enjoying, no doubt, how neatly the two women have been trapped in a decision which must be reached mutually.

Grayson watches as they risk one swift look at each other. Matilda is crying soundless tears, though he is not sure when this started. Sally colours, but holds the look just long enough for them each to lower their head, almost imperceptibly. They are agreeing. They must be. What can they do but say yes? Wrapping herself up in the hurt his betrayal has caused would mean only one thing for Matilda, and being alone, that awful reality, that is the realisation of her most primitive fear. Matilda cannot survive alone. And neither, now, can Sally. To raise a child without a father would prove impossible for so proud a woman. Soon, she will have to give up her teaching job, and how would she survive without it? And then there’s the shame, of course; the lifetime of shame. No, there’s nothing for it but to stay with him. Grayson is overly aware that he has placed them in an impossible situation. He is aware and he is sorry, but he is not about to offer them a way out. Not if he can keep both of them. Not if he can keep all three of them.

Monty turns back into the house, pausing in the hallway to consider the three people still standing in his doorway.

‘So, then,’ he says, grinning. ‘That’s that. And just look at the three of you. You really are a sight, you know.’

As he speaks, he winks at Sally, and Grayson understands then why they have been invited to stay. Of course, it is because of Sally: only Sally. She is young and beautiful and fresh enough to keep Monty entertained. She is his new game. She is going to get eaten up by him. And really, Gray should warn her about that; he should remove her from the situation; he should tell Monty that whilst they appreciate his offer, they ought to try to find some other home together first.

‘One more drink, then?’ Monty asks and Sally, agreeing, steps after him along the hallway. Even here, even now, Grayson is rapt: that feline way she has of walking; the long, pale delicacy of her limbs. His child will stretch and rip and deform that body. He will ruin the girl, inside and out. And he needs to tell her how sorry he is, truly, before it begins. He starts after her, but as he does, so Matilda steps forward to fill the new space at his side. He tenses slightly. He does not know how long she will stay calm like this, but he’s sure it cannot last forever. Nothing ever does, with Matilda. Then again, didn’t he fall in love with a woman who was unpredictable? Didn’t he commit to that constant worry? He supposes he did. He supposes he had been excited by it once.

‘I am sorry, you know.’

Matilda, sobering now, smiles sadly. ‘I do know.’

Grayson nods and waits, unreasonably or not, for Tilda to return his apology. Because, yes, he deserves that much. He does. He did not destroy their marriage on his own. She is just as culpable, with her … But before he can complete the thought, there is a movement at his side – a little fluttering, which puts him in mind of a butterfly, its wings folding on and around the air, its tiny form propelling itself bravely towards the sky. And it is Matilda, saying sorry the only way she knows how. It is Matilda, tangling her fingers into his and holding his hand.