Leo looked a bit disappointed. He said, "Right… " and shook his head slowly.

"I mean they're very good friends, they're a sort of second family to me, but I probably won't be there for long. It's just to help me out, while I'm getting started at university."

"And I thought I'd got myself a nice little rich boy," Leo said. And perhaps he meant it, Nick couldn't be sure, they were total strangers after all, though a minute before he'd imagined them naked together in the Feddens' emperor-size bed. Was that why his letter did the trick-the address, the Babylonian notepaper?

"Sorry," he said, with a hint of humour. He drank some more of the sweet strong rum and Coke, so obviously not his kind of drink. The refined blue of the dusk sky was already showing its old lonely reach.

Leo laughed. "I'm only kidding you!"

"I know," Nick said, with a little smile, as Leo reached out and squeezed his shoulder, just by his shirt collar, and slowly let go. Nick reacted with his own quick pat at Leo's side. He was absurdly relieved. A charge passed into him through Leo's fingers, and he saw the two of them kissing passionately, in a rush of imagination that was as palpable as this awkward pavement rendezvous.

"Still, your friends must be rich," Leo said.

Nick was careful not to deny this. "Oh, they're rolling in money."

"Yeah… " Leo crooned, with a fixed smile; he might have been savouring the fact or condemning it. Nick saw further questions coming, and decided at once he wouldn't tell him about Gerald. The evening demanded enough courage as it was. A Tory MP would shadow their meeting like an unwelcome chaperon, and Leo would get on his bike and leave them to it. He could say something about Rachel's family, perhaps, if an explanation was called for. But in fact Leo emptied his glass and said, "Same again?"