"Yeah…?" said Catherine, with a grateful, intrigued smile. She felt for cigarettes in her spangled evening bag. "He's doing lots of stuff for The Face at the moment. He's a brilliant photographer."

"I told them that too. They all take The Face, of course."

Catherine grunted. "I suppose Gerald was mouthing off about him."

"He was just saying he didn't have an opinion about him because he'd never met him."

"Mm… That doesn't normally prevent him. In fact that doesn't sound like him at all." She clicked her lighter and took in a first deep drag of smoke-the breathing out accompanied by a little toss of the head and a comforted settling back. "At all, at all, at all," she went on, meaninglessly assuming an Irish accent.

"Well… " Nick wanted everyone to get on, but for once he couldn't be bothered to work at it. He wished he was in a position to speak about Leo as freely as she spoke about Russell-he thought if he did bring the subject up she would say something upsetting and possibly true. She said,

"Did my mother show you round the house?"

"No, actually, your uncle did. I felt rather honoured."

Catherine paused and blew out smoke admiringly. "What do you make of him, then?"

"He seems very nice."

"Mm. What do you think, he's not gay, is he?"

"No, I didn't feel anything like that," Nick said, a little solemnly. He knew he was supposed to be able to tell; in fact he tended to think people were when they weren't, and so lived with a recurrent sense of disappointment, at them and at his own inadequate sensors. He didn't tell Catherine, but his uncertainty on the house tour had actually been the other way round. Had his own gayness somehow put Lord Kessler off and made him seem unreliable and lightweight in the old boy's eyes? Had Lord Kessler even registered-in his clever, unimpressionable way-that Nick was gay? "He asked me what I was going to do. It was a bit like an interview, except I hadn't applied for a job."