The email from Derek arrived the following morning. It said:

Fat Boy,

Do you ever turn your phone on? My father has to go in for a brain op next week, so I’ll be home on Tuesday. My mother will drive me insane if I stay with her and the secret’ll be out if I book into a hotel, so I was thinking your place – how about it? Room for a guest? It should only be for a few days. I think they only need to make a small hole. I’ll be on QF 176, so maybe you could let Andrea at the Chairman’s Lounge know I’m coming?

D

My phone – the mobile for which Derek had the number – was in a drawer. It had been there, turned off, for about two weeks.

So, they were about to put a small hole in Derek’s father’s head, but a big enough hole that Derek would let the hedonism slip for a few days and fly back here, to a room he assumed I was keeping for guests. It was typical Derek – sketchy details, a favour, a snarky remark in the opening line. Thanks very much. But the code behind it said to me that his father might be quite ill, and we both knew I was his best choice. So I would say yes, I would take him in, and I would ask a decent minimum number of questions about what was going on. That was where our history put us.

I wanted to tell him to stop being a fool, to stay for far more than a few days. I wanted to tell him that you don’t get forever with these people. I wanted to poke a small hole in his own skull and shove in a few lessons about the obvious. But we both knew I wouldn’t. Not yet, not today, not sober and months after our last proper conversation.

D,

You should get over your big ideas about yourself and celebrity arrivals. I’ll pick you up. No Chairman’s Lounge to hide you, no orange plastic crash barriers to keep the crowds at bay. Just me and my average car, doing it the way the little people do. You’ll be surprised how well it’ll work. I’ll even turn my phone on so you can let me know when you’re on the way through. And, yes, stay at my place. The last thing your dad needs is you being spotted in hotel foyers, and questions being asked about why you’re here. Though be aware that my new life doesn’t into the country and befriend a sniffer dog in customs, your best call from the watch house would be to a solicitor from the Yellow Pages, since it won’t be my problem. Stay clean and mi casa es su casa, for as long as it needs to be. I’m sorry to hear that about your father. I hope all works out okay there.

C

That would do for now. I wasn’t at all ready for Derek to come crashing into my new neighbourhood, with the sarcasm and reopened wounds and badly managed anguish that would entail. But at the same time there was a better side to how it all felt. It might even have been nostalgia for the times, years before, when he had ended up on my floor in whatever house I was sharing, back when he seemed to the world like a grandiose pretender, but I knew he had what it took.