Nick hastily finished his own drink, and said, "Thanks. Or maybe this time I'll have a shot of rum in it."

After half an hour more Nick had slid into a kind of excited trance brought on by his new friend's presence and a feeling, as the sky darkened and the street lamps brightened from pink to gold, that it was going to work out. He felt nervous, slightly breathless, but at the same time buoyant, as if a lonely responsibility had been taken off him. A couple of places came free at the end of a picnic table with fixed benches, and they sat leaning towards each other as though playing, and then half-forgetting, some invisible game. For Nick the ease and comfort of the rum were indistinguishable parts of the intimacy which he felt deepening like the dusk.

He found himself wondering how they looked and sounded to the people around them, the couple beside them at the table. It was all getting noisier as the evening went on, with a vague sense of heterosexual threat. Nick guessed Leo's other dates would have met him in a gay pub, but he had flunked that further challenge. Now he regretted the freedom he would have had there. He wanted to stroke Leo's cheek and kiss him, with a sigh of surrender.

Nothing very personal was said. Nick found it hard to interest Leo in his own affairs, and his various modest leads about his family and his background were not picked up. There were things he'd prepared and phrased and turned into jokes that were not to be heard-or not tonight. Once or twice he took Leo with him: into a falsely cheerful dismissal of the idea that Toby, though fairly attractive, was of any real interest to him (Leo would think him a weirdo to have loved so long and pointlessly); into a sketch of Rachel's banking family, which Leo interrupted with a sour smile, as if it was all proof of some general iniquity.