‘I know,’ says his father apologetically. ‘I know. It’s awful, isn’t it, how the time just slips away.’

‘How was your Christmas?’ Owen asks this sharply, not wanting to give his father any more opportunity to blame anything other than his own uninterest for their lack of communication.

‘Oh, it was, you know, hectic. I’m sorry that—’

‘It’s fine,’ he interjects again. He doesn’t want to go over it all again: the sick mother-in-law, the half-brother having some kind of pathetic Generation Z crisis to do with drugs and gender dysphoria, all a bit much this year, son, we’re going to batten down the hatches. The idea that his father battening down the hatches involved the exclusion of his firstborn son had been bad enough when it was first announced and it hasn’t improved with the passage of time.

‘Did you … How was your …?’

‘I spent it alone,’ Owen says.

‘Oh,’ says his father. ‘I assumed you’d be with Tessie, or …?’

‘No. Tessie went to Tuscany. I spent it alone. It was fine.’

‘Right,’ he says. ‘Good. Well, I’m sorry. And hopefully next Christmas will be a bit less …’

‘Hectic?’

‘Yes, a bit less hectic. And how’s … how’s work?’

‘I resigned from my job today. They were accusing me of sexual misconduct.’

‘Ouf.’ He hears his father wince.

‘Yes, apparently I stroked a girl’s hair at the college disco, and apparently I use triggering language in lessons and apparently being a normal man is no longer an acceptable thing to be in the classroom. Apparently we all have to be like robots these days and think about every last word before it leaves our lips. Apparently modern women cannot cope with anything, with anything at all.’

He’s shouting. He knew he would shout. It was why he’d called his father. His father knows he’s let Owen down, he knows he’s been a shit, shit dad. He lets Owen shout at him from time to time. He takes it. He doesn’t fix anything, but he takes it. And that’ll do for now.

‘Oh, Owen, it’s all so bloody ridiculous, isn’t it? Political correctness,’ he tuts. ‘It’s madness, it really is. But do you think resigning was the right response, really? I mean, how will you get another job?’

Owen winces against the unpalatable question. Then he thinks of YourLoss, strolling around his poncey little market town, writing his existential blog, doing his boring shitty office job. He seems happy enough. He seems to have it all under control.

‘I’ll get another job,’ he says. ‘It’s all just so …’

‘I know,’ says his father, ‘ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous.’

There’s a significant pause. Owen feels the onus is on him to fill it somehow. But he can’t and he doesn’t. Instead he leaves the way completely clear for his father to say, ‘Well, Owen, it’s been good talking to you. I’m sorry to hear you’re having a bad time of it. And we must get together soon. We really must. I mean, your birthday …?’

‘Next month.’

‘Yes. Next month. Let’s do something.’

‘Yes. Let’s.’

‘And Owen?’

‘Yes?’

‘These allegations. The, you know, sexual impropriety. I mean, there’s nothing to them. Is there?’

Owen sighs, lets himself sink to his haunches, his back against a wall. ‘No, Dad. No.’

‘Good. That’s good. Bye, Owen.’

‘Bye, Dad.’

Owen pulls himself back to standing. The anger that he transferred so very briefly on to his father has turned straight back on to himself, twice as hard and dark and sharp. He feels his veins fill with electricity. He walks fast now, towards the Tube station. He’s about to turn into the entrance when he sees across the road the rose-gold glow of a pub window. It’s twenty to twelve.

Owen is not much of a drinker. He likes wine with a meal or on a night out with colleagues, but not drinking just for the sake of drinking. Then he thinks again of his cold bedroom, of Tessie bumping about resentfully, and he thinks of YourLoss with a pint in a quiet corner of a pub, watching, learning, thinking, being. He imagines him as a tall man, broad-shouldered, short hair, neatly cut, maybe even a short beard or moustache. He imagines him in a button-down shirt and worn jeans and walking boots. He imagines him wiping away a slick of foam from the tips of his moustache, placing his pint carefully back on the beer mat, centring it just so. Lifting his gaze. Watching, learning, thinking, being.

He turns away from the Tube station, back to the pedestrian crossing, waits for the green man to flash and heads into the warmth of the pub. He orders a pint. He finds a table for one. He sits at it.

16

A few hours later Owen pushes his way heavily through the door of the Oriental Star opposite his local Tube station. He waits at the till for a special chow mein and a can of Tango and then takes them to the counter in the window where he watches people pouring from the Tube, wondering at the terrifying unknowability of strangers.

He uses the noodles to try to soak up the three pints of lager he had while he was in the pub by himself. Being drunk alone was an alarming experience. He’d gone to the toilet and pissed on his shoes, wobbled, laughed at his reflection in the mirror and talked to himself, then bumped into a table on the way out causing the wine in a woman’s glass to slosh over the rim. ‘I am so very sorry,’ he said. ‘Please don’t report me to the authorities.’ And she’d looked at him sideways, unsmilingly, and he’d said fucking bitch under his breath, left the pub and then immediately wished he hadn’t said it.

After his noodles he ascends the steep hill to his road. The drunkenness is receding, dampened. He looks up and sees the moon shining down between two tall trees, against a navy-blue sky. He takes out his phone and tries to capture it, but the moon refuses to show off for him, imprinting itself as a vague white smudge on the image.

He puts his phone back in his pocket and then turns, and as he does so a thin figure comes hurtling towards him, shoulders him roughly, nearly knocks him backwards.

The figure barely slows as it turns backwards. ‘Sorry, mate. Sorry.’

The figure then reverses and hurtles down to the end of the hill, runs on the spot, then turns and hurtles back up the hill, right up the middle of the road.

Owen stands and watches him.

He sees that it is a middle-aged man, wearing tight Lycra leggings and a zip-up jacket with strange black flaps over his ears and wires coming out of a tiny pocket in his jacket.

A jogger. He throws Owen a strange look, before running back down again. The road is a dead end, separated from the six lanes of traffic on the Finchley Road by a set of stone steps. For a while it is just Owen and the jogger.

As the jogger reaches the top of the hill for the sixth time he stops and collapses into himself, breathing so loudly he sounds as though he might die. He glances up at Owen. ‘You all right, mate?’ he asks.

Owen feels something stir deep inside himself, something dark. He looks at the jogger and he says, ‘Are you married?’

The jogger grimaces and says, ‘Eh?’

‘Married?’ says Owen. ‘Got a girlfriend?’

‘What’s it got to do with you?’

‘Nothing,’ he replies. ‘I just wondered.’

He starts to head around the corner to his street when the man catches up with him. ‘Do I know you?’ he asks.

‘I have no idea.’

‘Are we neighbours? I feel like I’ve seen you …’

‘I live there. Number twelve.’ He points at Tessie’s building and shrugs.

‘Ah, yes. That’s right. We live there.’ The man points at the house opposite, the one where the teenage girl lives, where the stupid mother with the concerned face lives.

Owen nods. The man gives him a tight smile before jogging away from him. ‘See you around,’ he says.

‘Yeah,’ says Owen. ‘See you around.’

The TV in Tessie’s sitting room rumbles through the closed door. She’s watching the live feed from the Houses of Parliament. Something to do with Brexit. It sounds like a donkey compound.

He tiptoes past, gets himself a pint of water from the kitchen and then locks himself away in his bedroom where he undoes the top three buttons of his shirt, kicks off his scruffy shoes and opens up YourLoss’s blog. There’s a new post up but he doesn’t read it. Instead he scrolls down the page to the link that says Contact. Hi, he types in the contact form:

My name’s Owen. I love your blog. Would love to chat sometime. I’ve just lost my job. Don’t really know what my next steps are.

Yo, Owen [comes the reply], what’s going down with you?

I’m a teacher. I was accused of ‘sweating on a student’ and ‘taking the mick out of vegans’. And I just turned down the chance to attend a ‘retraining course’ and quit.

No way! Tell me more!

Owen replies succinctly. The outline of the thing. The party, the tequila shots, the girls, the meetings. The curl of distaste on the mouths of Clarice and Holly every time the word ‘sweat’ was mentioned.

What’s the deal with you [asks YourLoss]? Are you celibate? Infrequent? Never? What?

Celibate [he replies]. Never.

Do you like anyone? I mean, are you romantic?