‘But how could I not recognise you? You must know I see you every night.’

Tim put the two glasses down on the table and lowered himself into a deep leather chair. He sunk into it easily and Benjamin Tate imagined he had spent many hours in that position.

‘Sit,’ he said, pointing to the chair opposite.

Benjamin Tate crossed the room and sat down. Between them, on the glass table, faint images of each man stared up tensely. For many moments then neither spoke as they came to terms with the other’s presence. For more than two decades they had been intrinsically linked by a shared experience. They had each in their own way obsessed about the other, lived out this moment in their heads and wondered whether it would ever come to pass.

‘So, here we are.’

‘In the end I couldn’t not come.’

Benjamin Tate looked around, taking in the vast room. So much space. Almost too much space. Yes, his entire flat would comfortably fit in here. A deep burgundy rug covered much of the polished wood floor. A gigantic mirror – how had they manoeuvred it through the door? – showed the two men again, seated quietly, in a parallel dimension. They might have been friends there. There was a fireplace, leather sofas, modern colour schemes and plush décor. He thought sourly of his own home, so bleak and meagre by comparison.

Tim drained the last of his drink and then leaned back. He put his head against the cushion and closed his eyes. For a moment he softly hummed to himself and then fell silent. He might have been asleep were it not for his finger tapping on the glass. Tap, tap, tap it went. Tap, tap, tap. So satisfied. So untroubled. Good for him, though, Benjamin Tate thought, good for him. But also, fuck him. While I’ve been enduring the unendurable he’s been living here, building an empire. It doesn’t matter. Who am I to be bitter? The triumph of the world has no bearing on the failure of the individual, as convenient as it might be to think so.

‘You’ve done well for yourself,’ he said.

‘I’ve been successful,’ Tim answered. ‘Is that the same thing? I don’t know. What about you? I noticed you limping. Is that still from then?’

‘Yes. My knee.’ He put a hand to it subconsciously. ‘It’s nothing.’

Tim nodded. ‘So, there was no scholarship then.’

Scholarship? Good Lord, was that even the same life? It was hard to fathom. The word came from a past so distant and removed that it was almost impossible to believe it had ever existed. But it had once. He had lived in it once, been its star, and once upon time so much had been in front of him.

‘No,’ he said now. ‘No scholarship.’

‘That’s a shame. What have you done instead?’

‘Nothing. I’ve done nothing. Actually, that is something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately.’

‘Have you, indeed?’ Tim smiled to himself. He had finished his drink and was halfway through another. ‘An existential crisis. Poor you,’ he added, closing his eyes again.

Benjamin Tate studied him closely. He appeared so much older than he’d expected. He’d allowed for the passage of time, added the years and created an impression of what he thought he might look like, but this decrepit figure was nothing like what he’d seen in his mind’s eye. The spotlight was above and in front of him, glaring down on his face from a height. A reading light, he realised. Yes, he had surely spent many evenings in just this pose. The light was not flattering. It deepened and darkened shadows that he imagined were already deep and dark. And bald as a coot, too, with lips that had all but vanished, and those creases on his face. They made his skin look like a sheet of paper that had been screwed up and flattened out again.

He wanted to tell him that he wasn’t in crisis, not of the existential kind or any other. It had been resolved, or very soon would be. He thought of his dream, of the dark shape that was approaching. He wasn’t scared. Or he was a little scared. He put his hand on his thigh. The object was still tucked up tightly against it. It would come out soon enough.

‘I hope you’re up to it,’ he said.

Tim opened his eyes again. ‘What’s that?’ He refilled his drink, noticed Benjamin Tate’s was still untouched and leaned forward, nudging it across the table towards him. ‘Please, drink,’ he said.

But he didn’t want to drink. He wondered why he was even being offered a drink. He began to feel like something was slipping through his fingers, like he was being cheated in some undefinable way. He hadn’t come here for this, to find solace in some sort of uneasy survivor’s bond. Is that what was being offered?

‘Are you married?’ Tim asked.

‘No.’

‘Ever been?’

‘No.’

‘No. Something like this can isolate you, can’t it?’

‘I’ve got no one to blame but myself. Where’s your wife tonight?’

Tim’s finger froze on the glass. Was that a smile, a trace of a smile? ‘Well, time really has stood still, for us, hasn’t it? My wife is no longer my wife. Not for years.’ He waved his glass dismissively, spilling much of it on the rug. He either didn’t notice or didn’t care. ‘It was inevitable,’ he continued. ‘Husbands and wives rarely survive the death of a child.’

Benjamin Tate was shocked. That phrase. How could he say it like that, so casually, so matter of fact? Had he no heart? But it had been there all the time, circling. It had crept closer, snuck up stealthily, hiding behind other things, less diabolical things, and then leaped out into plain sight. It couldn’t now be ignored. The death of a child. The fact of it sat there on the table like a hideous thing, like a horned beast, like the devil himself.

Tim got up and went to the drinks cabinet again. He refilled his glass, drained it, refilled it again. Was that his fourth, or fifth? He was nearly drunk. He brought a new bottle back with him and slouched heavily into his chair, groaning as he did so. His finger began ticking again. Tap, tap, tap.

Benjamin Tate tried to recall what had been written on his card. ‘I won’t read it,’ he had promised Pete, ‘I just want the address.’ But Pete hadn’t cared, and of course he’d read it. Depression, and something to do with his spine, something degenerative and chronic, and substance abuse. Had it just been alcohol?

Of course, all these delights had still been in front of him when they’d met first, half met. He had been just the slogger in the park then, and just the parent in the playground with sleep in his eye and a small child, his daughter – the death of a child, say her name – watching him from the foot of the slide with that churlish look on her face. How light she’d been. It was a marvel. And there they go now, hand in hand, with the early morning sun on them, disappearing together over the soft dew-covered verges. What had they talked about that day, that final day, on their way home? What do fathers and daughters ever talk about? They had so little time left.

‘I’ve never spoken of it,’ he said.

Why hadn’t he? It angered him that his parents had never discussed it, not once, not to him at least. They must have talked endlessly amongst themselves during those long nights when he was still in the hospital. Yet their reticence when he’d returned had been almost abnormal. He’d first assumed they were simply giving him space in which to recover, in all manner of ways, but the days went by, the weeks went by, and then one morning he awoke with the knowledge that, without anyone noticing, a point had been passed and it could no longer be broached even if they’d wanted to.

Tim was watching him with steady, inscrutable eyes. ‘That’s because it’s unspeakable,’ he said, ‘what you did.’ He sat forward in his chair. ‘I have an idea, why don’t you tell me why you’re really here tonight.’

Benjamin Tate’s pulse quickened. ‘Don’t you know?’

‘You tell me.’ He picked up Benjamin Tate’s full glass and plonked it back down clumsily on the table. ‘I said drink.’

Benjamin Tate stared at it. The lights were dancing in its gold liquid. How were they, when nothing else in the room was moving? ‘I don’t want to have a drink with you,’ he said. ‘That’s not what I want.’

‘What do you want then?’

‘I want what you owe me.’

‘What I owe you? What can I possibly owe you? I owe you nothing.’

‘Of course you do. You know what I did.’ He suddenly realised what had bothered him about the photos in the hallway. They were all of the child, exclusively of her. In none of them was there a trace of either parent.

‘Yes,’ Tim said. ‘And?’

‘And nothing. Isn’t that enough? Isn’t what I did enough?’

‘Enough for what?’

‘Enough to pay me back. To need to pay me back.’

Tim was grimacing now. No, not grimacing, it was a smile. He was twitching. A vein in his temple pulsed. That hand, still trembling. Nerves. But not made nervous by this. No. Made nervous by life, his life, all of life. ‘You need to tell me what happened,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘I want to know.’ He drained another glass, watching Benjamin Tate through the bottom as he did so. It bulged and distorted his eye. ‘Tell me. Come on. Only you know. Talk me through it.’