Chapter 1: Oh, I Don't Like to Be Beside the Graveside

Friday June 26^th, 2015. Keller & Fox building 3, Sussex Gardens, London.

“Well, that’s me done. I’ll file these on Monday. Anything else I can do for you?”

“Thank you Daphne, but I think you should go home and enjoy the weekend.”

“Smashing! Have you got any plans? Oh ... Sorry.”

“That’s quite alright. Shall I order you a car?”

“Nah, I’ll take the ... Oh.”

“You can say Underground, you know. It’s not banned. Life goes on. But why turn down a ride?”

“Because I’ve got to stay in shape! It’s so easy to lose muscle tone in a wheelchair. Besides, I’m doing some shopping on the way home. Now, you sure you’ll be alright?”

“Yes. I’ll see you ... Tuesday?”

“Wednesday. Exams on Tuesday.”

“Oh, right. Well, good luck.”

“Won’t need it. Well, kiss your son for me. Or gob on him. Same thing.”

Daphne makes that joke all the time. She’s my legal assistant and fifty percent of the staff of a company I run. (I’m the other half.) She’s also confined to a wheelchair, because she has cerebral palsy. That means she always sounds as if she is completely drunk, which I prefer not to relay in writing because it might give the impression she’s not all there. And she bloody well is, believe me. I don’t know if I’d have the willpower to take public transport and do my own shopping if I were in a wheelchair. I’ve been known to sit through an entire episode of Temptation Island, just because the remote was on the other sofa. Although I did try making myself pass out by pressing a sofa cushion in my face, because I’m not mental or anything.

When Daphne had left, I called my wife, Melody.

“Hi sweetheart,” she said, picking up after just one ring.

“Hi gorgeous. How’s your mother doing?”

“Not great. I was going to call you. It might be best if Edwin and I spend the night here. Would that be okay?”

“Absolutely. But I can come and take him off your hands if you like.”

“No, don’t. Mum so loves having him around. And I brought all the gear. We’re fine.”

Melody’s mother had had an operation two days previous. Gall stones. If you ever have a chance to wish something upon your worst enemy, you could do worse than pick gall stones. Mrs. Warder and I weren’t close, but she was my wife’s mother and a lovely grandmother to our son Edwin, so I bore her no ill will.

“Well, let me know if you change your mind. And your mother is welcome at our place, as I’ve said. Kate is away and Kelly has rehearsals, so she won’t be in the way.”

“I know, but you know what old people are like. They prefer to be home. Ecoute, maman, tu as cinquante-trois ans!”

I guess Mrs. Warder was listening in and objected to being called old at fifty-three. And she was right, but Mel was twenty-nine at that point. Mel and her mother often speak French, because Mel grew up in Paris.

“Your mother is right, Mel. And besides, she doesn’t look a day over forty!” I said loudly, eager to score some points with my mother in law.

“Kiss-ass,” giggled Melody. And I think Mrs. Warder chuckled too, which she’d never do if I were in the room. “Now, will you be alright? Oh hang on, it’s game night, isn’t it?”

“Yes. I’ll be fine. Give Edwin a hug.”

“Will do. Bye, sweetheart.”

“Bye, gorgeous.”

After I hung up I stepped into the pantry to load the dishwasher. It’s just Daphne and me, on the second floor of a building on Sussex Street. We had four empty offices to ourselves, but we shared the largest one. Running Scytale, which develops and licenses ticketing software, doesn’t take up much time. That’s fine, because Daphne is actually studying for her law degree and I fill the rest of my week as the interim IT Manager for Keller & Fox. Once a month, on a Friday, everybody in the IT department stays late. We order pizza and spare ribs and then we play Team Fortress 2. Except today, because I really wasn’t in the mood. I’d had my share of violence, recently.

I don’t suppose you remember the terrorist attack of June 11th, even though you will have heard about it. It wasn’t the only one that year and these incidents have an unfortunate habit of blending together. They follow certain patterns and the images from the news are often all too familiar. These days everyone has a phone with a camera, but even then you hardly get more than some shaky footage of someone hiding behind a wall or a table. The rest is all police cars and ambulances, white sheets and puddles of blood, politicians and spokespeople, marches and protests, candles and flowers. And we’ll see it all again the next time terror strikes.

I stopped following the news a while ago, to shield myself from all this misery. What can you do about it, anyway? But then it happened to me. To me and, more importantly, my family. My son, my wife, my sister and my friend, Diana. We were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Terrorism came for us, that day. And it took someone I held very dear.

Some shit stain believed his religion demanded that he take a sword to a bunch of innocent people, which I saw him do three times that day. That it was justified to take a swing at my wife and my infant son as they were seeking shelter. That his God, called Allah, would approve of that and reward him.

If it hadn’t been for Diana, I would now be a widower and a ... an ... You know, it occurs to me we have no word for parents who have lost their children, but I would have been one of those, too. And that bastard had a go at my sister as well, even though she stood her ground. Still, he tried. Which is why I personally fed him feet first into the machinery of an Underground escalator, which tore the flesh from his bones and devoured him while he was very much alive and conscious. I know this for a fact, because I looked him in the eye as it happened. And I’d have seen it through to the end, but friends came to get me and my family and took us to safety, away from prying eyes and police interviews.

We left Diana there, because she was beyond help. I only saw her again on the day of her funeral, which was a week ago. And now I was back in the office. Because life goes on, apparently. I finished loading the dishwasher, which only had a few cups and mugs to do, and took out my phone to call my driver.

“Yo, Mista King.”

“Ali, please bring the car around.”

“You got it. ‘Ere, hang on, ain’t it freaky Friday?”

“Yes. I’m not joining in. But I’ll let Winston know, thanks for reminding me. How long will you need?”

“I was just givin’ it a wash. If I can ‘ave ten more minutes, I can do the rims an’ all.”

“Sure. I’ll wait outside.”

“Ace.”

“Hi, Mr. King.”

“Hello Winston. I just wanted to let you know I won’t be joining in tonight.”

“Yes, Sir. I understand. In fact, we were wondering if it was appropriate to have game night at all.”

“I’d say it most certainly is, for you. It’s just a bit too soon for me to play a shoot ‘em up.”

“We could play Gran Turismo? Or FIFA?”

“No. I’ve somewhere I need to be. You go ahead and have fun. You’ve earned it. Well, you have. I’m not sure about the rest of ‘em. Bunch of fucking geeks.”

Winston chuckled. In that moment we switched from the employer - employee routine to being gaming buddies.

“If you change you mind, give us a call. Join in from home if you want. Uhm ... is Daphne still there?”

“She left fifteen minutes ago. Why, were you finally going to ask her out?”

“I was ... uhm ... No, it’s just...”

“I thought so. Look, you have to make the first move! She’ll say yes, but you have to ask her!”

“Yeah ... I will. Soon.”

“Uh-huh. Have a good one, Winston.”

“Thanks. We’ll keep a seat warm for you.”

“That sounds disgusting. Ta ta.”

Yes, I started making jokes again. I had to. For the first three days after the incident I couldn’t even speak. I was so afraid of the vile, racist, hurtful, stupid things that might come tumbling out of my mouth that it was just physically impossible for me to say anything. I wanted to say things that are usually said by the dumbest, most despicable people on TV (and YouTube. Especially YouTube). Things no educated, self-respecting man would say, because violence and hatred are not supposed to be the solution to anything, especially not to violence and hatred from others. I wanted to say things you usually only hear in an Arkansan drawl, uttered by a shifty-eyed man in a camouflage jacket, or shouted in a Glaswegian accent by a drunk teenager with a ballpoint pen tattoo swastika on his forehead. And so I said nothing. Nothing at all. For three days.

Eventually the desire to communicate with Edwin helped me to overcome that blockade, but it was a weird and unsettling experience.

I was one of the last to leave the building, so I had a brief chat with the guard and the cleaning lady while I waited for Ali to pull out of the underground garage. The drivers treat that as their inner sanctum, so I don’t usually get in the car there unless it’s raining.

I didn’t have to wait long before a gleaming silver Mercedes calmly pulled up at the front entrance and Ali got out to open the door for me.

“Home?” he asked, as I got in the back.

“No. Highgate cemetery, please. And find a florist on the way there.”

“Oh. Right. Sure, man.”

Ali, whose full name is Algernon, is my chauffeur. I didn’t ask for a company car and I certainly didn’t ask for a driver, but I got one all the same. Initially I found him extremely annoying, but we’ve been through a few scrapes together and we both made some concessions that make this arrangement possible. Ali no longer tries to foist his awful music on me and I don’t make him listen to Jazz FM. He’s learned to open doors and not eat KFC in the car, which is basically all I ask. The other drivers are a lot more servile and polite, but I don’t care for that. Just don’t expect me to fist bump you when we reach our destination, or to discuss ‘luscious chicks’ we spot on the sidewalk.

Highgate Cemetery covers 15 hectares and counts quite a few celebrities, if that is the word, amongst its permanent residents. Karl Marx is probably the most famous example, but Anna Mahler, daughter to Gustav, also has a grave there, as does Douglas Adams, one of the funniest authors I’ve ever read. And now Diana Albinson, noted actress of stage and screen. Unlike most of the other notable figures, who are buried in the eastern part of the grounds, her grave is quite near the entrance of the west side. Ali knew where to park.

“Shall I ... I mean ... D’ya want me to come along?” he asked, as he held the door open for me. He had been unusually quiet during our journey.

“Well, you were there when she died. I’d understand if you wanted to say goodbye to her.”

“Yeah. I would. If you don’t mind.”

“Not at all.”

Highgate is more like a park than a cemetery. We’d just had a bit of rain and I like the way that makes the trees smell. We walked in silence on the gravel pathways that meander through the park. It’s not all graves, not by a long shot. Highgate was established in 1839 and isn’t anywhere near full, despite having more than 53,000 graves and a large section for urns. Most of the trees, shrubs and wildflowers appeared without any human intervention, and it’s become something of a wildlife reserve. Sadly, it caught the attention of filmmakers a while ago, because the Victorians put up a host of very picturesque Gothic tombs, gravestones and mausoleums. The Egyptian Avenue in particular has featured in quite a few movies and there are numerous bullshit stories about vampires and ghosts connected to the site. Some sections are now only accessible via a guided tour. I was happy Diana’s grave wasn’t anywhere near those areas. I’d hate to see it in the background of some horror movie or lurid Victorian murder mystery.

Her grave was very ornate, because a lot of people had come together to pay for something lavish. The gravestone was actually a column with some symbols carved into it. One side featured a rose, the symbol of beauty. On the opposite side was an arrow, which symbolises martyrdom. The front had the comedy and tragedy masks, to indicate her calling in life. Below that her date of birth and date of death. In life she had kept her age hidden, but that secret was out now, anyway. Thanks, Wikipedia.

The column was broken, to indicate her life had ended too soon. And it stood on a marble slab, into which her name was chiseled in gilded letters: Diana Louise Albinson. It was very much the kind of final resting place you get when lots of people are chipping in. But then again, matters of taste are irrelevant when it comes to graves, don’t you think?

To top it all off, a wrought iron fence about fifty centimetres in height ran around the slab. It even had a little gate, which I opened to place my bouquet of pink roses just under her name. I was going to get her red roses, but the florist had discreetly asked if it was for a friend or someone more intimate. And obviously, although I did love her briefly, we were friends at that point. Apparently there’s a code regarding the right flowers to put on a grave. Sunflowers indicate admiration, red is for romantic love and pink is for friendship or gratitude. So pink it was, because even though it hurt like a bastard when I found out she didn’t love me back, the fact that a kind and amazing woman such as her had taken an interest in me at all had really helped to cheer me up. So much so that the real me reappeared, which brought me Melody.

To my surprise, Ali cleared his throat and began to speak. That’s perfectly fine, obviously, but I just didn’t see it coming. Just in time I managed to shut my mouth and fold my hands in front of me, to listen quietly.

“So uhm Missus Albinson, my name is Ali, right, and I just wanna say ... I’m sorry. For what happened. But thanks for saving Missus King and Eddie. And Kate. That was a real stand up thing you did. I was there, you know, when it happened, on the platform. And I thought I knew who you was. Well, it took me a while, but I figured it out. I, like, saw you doin’ um ... wassername ... Ophelia, right? In ‘Amlet. On the telly, in Mr. Tapper’s class. On video tape it was, in like that square shape from when television was really long ago. He started the tape and I remember thinking: ‘Bloody hell, am I gonna have to look at this grainy shit for two hours?’ But then after like fifteen minutes I really got into it and you was Ophelia, I remember. That king made you spy on ‘Amlet an’ you did it, ‘cause you was a good daughter. I kept thinking about you for a while, after that class. You was really properly good in that play.”

Ali stopped talking and looked at me.

“Was that alright?” he asked. I had to swallow twice and blink even more before I could answer.

“That was beautiful, Ali. That’s exactly what she wanted to achieve as an actress. Well said.”

Ali smiled.

“Aight. Now you do it.”

I shook my head.

“I don’t think I can do better than you right now, Ali. But if it’s okay with you, I’d like a few minutes here by myself.”

“Yeah. Sure. I’ma ... gonna hang back. Like, well back.”

“Thank you.”

Ali, clearly following some improvised ritual in his own head, took three steps backwards before he turned away from the grave and calmly walked away. I assumed he’d be quiet, but after only a few seconds I could hear his annoyingly loud whisper behind my back.

“Oi, mate, would you, like, be okay with walking the odda way? ‘Cause my mate, he’d like to have a moment wiv...”

“I think Mr. King won’t mind me,” said a familiar voice. I turned to look. It was Nigel, Diana’s husband. He wasn’t wearing a suit and didn’t have a chauffeur. He wore a parka and held a single red rose in his hand.

“It’s alright, Ali,” I said. “Hello Nigel.”

Nigel smiled at Ali, patted his shoulder in a friendly way and walked up to me. We shook hands. He saw my roses.

“That’s lovely,” he said. “Thanks so much for that. I was going to bring her a rose every week for a year. Looks a bit puny next to those.”

“Not at all. Look, I’ll give you some privacy,” I said. Diana had been his wife. I had no idea what kind of arrangement they had at the time, that she was allowed to have boyfriends, but that was all water under the bridge now.

“Oh, don’t leave on my account! I mean ... It’s great someone’s here. No, please. Stay. Were you ... going to pray?”

“I don’t pray. But go right ahead.”

“I don’t either. Let me just...”

He opened the tiny gate and placed his rose on top of my bouquet, chatting to Diana as if she were actually listening.

“Hello puppet, this is for you. I was on my way to have dinner with Lola and I thought I’d drop in. She’s at work now but we’ll come together next week.”

I waited for him to close the gate and asked:

“How is Lola? And how are you?”

He pointed at a bench, about fifty metres down the path.

“Shall we sit down? I walked here from the tube and I’ve got a bit of a dicky knee. If you’ve got time, of course.”

“Certainly.”

I’d sit here all night and listen to him if I had to. I had nowhere else to be and if I had lost Melody, or Kate for that matter, I’d be a complete fucking mess. The fact he was able to walk at all amazed me. We wiped some raindrops off the bench and sat down.

“Lola is over the worst of it, I’d say,” he said, answering my question from a minute earlier. “This is the first night she’s back on stage. I was going to go and see her and then have dinner. But I suppose it doesn’t matter if I’m a bit late. I’ve seen that play half a dozen times now.”

It was five thirty, or thereabouts. Plays generally start at eight. I guessed he was settling in for a long talk and wondered if I should send Ali away. But it turned out he was more worried about me!

“So I hear you couldn’t speak for a week, what’s that all about?”

“What? How did you hear that? Besides, it was only a few days. We spoke before the funeral, remember?”

“Oh right. Bit of a haze, to be honest. So much to do. I don’t know who told me. And then there was all that police business. That wasn’t easy, keeping you out of it.”

I should stress I never asked him to keep me out of it. Caroline did that. I spoke to Nigel and Lola, to let them know Diana’s last words and to give a brief account of what had happened. Then for some reason the police wanted to interview him and apparently Caroline had asked him not to mention our presence. You know, what with me having killed two of the attackers. Or to be precise: I pushed one in front of a train and stuffed the other in a moving cogwheel. He died three hours later, while they were trying to get him out.

“How did you manage that?”

“Crying. I just cried like a maniac whenever they asked for details. In the end they gave up. Caroline told me all sorts of things I should and shouldn’t say, but I couldn’t remember them. Crying is perfect: coppers hate it. And it came quite easy, as you can imagine. So your secret is safe with me. I hope that bastard suffered.”

“They both did. I appreciate it, Nigel.”

“Yeah. Who’d have thought you and me would be friends, right? Ha.”

I didn’t. Right up until that moment, in fact.

We met when I started doing theatre lights for a production called ‘I Married A Murderer’, produced by and starring Diana in a theatre one hour away from London. Nigel was the male lead and even though his part was mainly to run around nervously and distract the police inspector which I later came to play, he did it very well and always got the laughs he was supposed to get.

Nigel and I had disliked each other from the start. My reason was that he was a grumpy sod off-stage, but his reason was that I was fucking his wife. I just didn’t know that, because Diana assumed everyone knew she was married to Nigel. But I have to admit that he was very generous on stage, where it would have been very easy to upstage or embarrass me. He never did that, because he’s a professional. I’ve seen some of his work since and his career is about as impressive as Diana’s, even though he mostly played smaller parts. He’s done a lot of them, though: his IMBD page lists over one hundred entries, but at least fifty of those roles are simply described as ‘thug’, ‘Russian henchman’, ‘police sergeant’ or ‘businessman’. Still, these people are badly needed. We can’t all be stars and headliners: supporting roles are vital to making the story feel realistic. Nigel, with his eternal scowl and his doglike face, had made a career of that kind of work. And Diana had seen right through it all and picked him to share her life with, even though she asked to be let off the leash occasionally. And one day she picked me as a playmate, and he had put up with it.

He’d had bigger roles, too. In fact, he had played Macbeth opposite Diana (as Lady Macbeth, obviously) in a BBC stage adaptation in the late eighties, which I’d watched on TV only two nights before, and he was amazing in that. In fact, even though I’d known him for a while now, I was a tiny bit star struck all of a sudden. Isn’t that weird? People sometimes get that with me, but it’s good to be reminded of what it feels like, occasionally.

“So how have you been handling it?” he asked.

“Me? I’m fine. Really. I was asking about you, remember?”

“Yeah, but I’m not the one who was actually attacked by two guys with a knife and a gun, with his family there. You really couldn’t speak?”

“No. I mean yes. Completely mute.”

“Not even ‘pass the sugar’ or something?”

“Nothing.”

“You were that angry?”

“Yes.”

“Wow. You should speak to someone about that, mate. That’s not good.”

“Excuse me? I got off easy compared to you!”

He scowled. And that’s a scowl that has made him quite a bit of money, so it packs a punch.

“Yeah. That’s why you’re here, on a Friday afternoon, putting flowers on my wife’s grave. ‘Cause you got off easy.”

“It’s not about me, Nigel,” I said, as I leaned forward and rested my elbows on my knees. I could see Ali in the distance, listening to music on his phone. I could just make out the white cable from his headphones. He was fine there.

“Listen, Martin. I want to tell you something that might help. But you have to promise, really swear on a stack of bibles, that this will never make the press. So no telling Kate or Caroline or any of ‘em. Okay?”

“Absolutely. Where would two atheists get a stack of bibles, by the way?”

“I’m no atheist: I’m just done praying. But even though I’m completely fucked up by this, I’ve cried enough in the past two weeks to last me for a while. But you need to know something. So you promise?”

“You have my word.”

“Okay. Diana wanted to do that play with you, right? Wind down her career.”

“Yes. She wanted to start directing.”

“Bollocks. She’s never cared for that. The truth of the matter is that ... Ooohhh, fuck. I hate this.”

He sighed, leaned back and folded his hands behind his head. That wasn’t very comfortable, so he changed back and mirrored my position.

“About a year ago, Diana had an infection. She had to take pills for that. A lot of pills, at different intervals. And she messed it up, big time. Like ... damned near poisoned herself. Just couldn’t keep track of the dosage. I couldn’t understand, but the long and the short of it is that we discovered she had Alzheimer’s. I mean, the doctor came up with that, based on a few clues. As soon as we heard that, a lot of things fell into place.”

“Oh Jesus...” I groaned. “Don’t tell me she thought I was you when we ... dated!”

“NO! Oh God no! Dear boy, no! Don’t worry about that. No. She was fine back then. But lately she’d been forgetting a lot of things, she started to repeat herself ... things like that. She startled easy. Lost her sense of smell, sometimes. Anyway, they did a brain scan. Alzheimer’s. Clear as day. Fairly advanced.”

“But she was on stage four nights a week!”

Nigel slapped his own thigh.

“YES! That’s why it took us a while to find out! She’s spent her entire life training her memory. It was her job. Pages and pages and more bloody pages, year after year. For theatre plays, films, TV-shows, anything. Big stacks of paper. And she always knew every bloody word. Apparently that’s exactly the kind of mental exercise that helps you keep Alzheimer’s at bay. Use it or lose it, the doctor said. And she used it. Woman never even wrote shopping lists. Checked her bank statements once a month, and she was never surprised by the balance. She had a good memory. Plus, she was a great actress and a great improviser, so any time she’d forgotten something she would just fix it on the go. That script you and her did? She learned that in three days. That would have taken me a MONTH!”

“Okay. I get it. But Nigel, that makes no difference. We’ve still lost her. She had God knows how many good years left in her. I don’t know much about Alzheimer’s, but there’s medication and maybe therapy and...”

Nigel placed his hand on my shoulder.

“Listen. Shut up. I know what you’re saying. But for HER, it was terrible. She was deathly afraid of losing it, Martin. It shook her up something awful. She started looking into options for assisted suicide, she drew up a new will, she just completely lost it. And then she decided she wanted to do one last thing. That play.”

“With me. Of all people! When you’re a fine actor! Why?”

“She wanted me to direct. And truth be told, I suck at improvisation. You don’t. Besides, you wouldn’t have known. I would have frozen as soon as she deviated one word from the script, but you’d just have rolled with it. You may be a one trick pony, Martin, but you do that trick VERY well.”

“Uhm ... Excuse me?”

He grinned.

“What? Like that’s a secret?”

“I’m not asking for a review, but ... one trick pony?!”

“Yes! Look, that’s not a bad thing! You just ... Your range is limited to ... well, you. Aspects of you. The Inspector, that’s just you. A grumpy, mistrusting version of you. Carstairs, that’s you being nice and caring and then suddenly ripping someone’s tits off when they are a threat to Kelly. That Nazi, that’s you! Not the ... Not the anti-Semitism, obviously, don’t get me wrong. But if someone shakes you up, you’ll go on a fucking rampage and nobody better get in your way. Right? That’s just ... That’s who you are. You couldn’t play, say, a gay hairdresser or a snitch or a ... a ... politician or something. That’s not in you. You’d suck. I’ve worked with you, remember?”

I needed a moment to let that sink in. I never made any effort to become an actor, that just happened. Certainly never took lessons. And I was aware I had a limited range, but I didn’t care because I had no ambitions. But surely I’d be able to play a snitch? How hard is that? I couldn’t quite see myself as a gay hairdresser, but I’d give it a damned good go if I liked the part. I’d play the Fairy Godmother in panto if anyone asked! In fact, I’d quietly been hoping someone asked!

“Look, it’s fine. I’m not saying this to be mean. I play snivelling arseholes most of the time. Made bank with that. Do what comes natural, eh?” said Nigel, offering a fairly convincing smile and some self-deprecation to soften the blow.

“Yes ... well ... Be that as it may: the fact Diana was suffering from Alzheimer’s doesn’t suddenly make it alright that she died.”

Nigel turned and made sure we had eye contact.

“It does. Not for you and me. We still have to miss her. We had to bury her. I had to tell her daughter that her mum died. For us it’s fucking awful. But for HER ... I’m sure that’s why she did it. Well, not deliberately. I’m not saying she was suicidal. But she saw a way to make her death mean something. Save some innocent people. A child. A mother. And she did it. And you know what, Martin? I’m glad. I’m fucking GLAD! She died a Goddamned hero in that tunnel. She died for a purpose and she died with a friend by her side. And it saved her five, maybe ten years of being afraid. Afraid to take on work. Afraid of humiliating herself. Of pissing herself. Of ending up in the papers or on fucking TWITTER as that former actress who was found waiting at a bus stop for a day and a half because she forgot who she was and where she lived. Because she...”

He stopped talking abruptly and started to cry. Poor bastard.

Yeah, that wasn’t a fun five minutes. I don’t think I ever hugged another man for that long before. My dad and I are a bit more at ease with physical contact, now that he’s old and I’ve spent time around American men, but I think twenty seconds is our record. And that was on my wedding day. But the thing about actors, proper actors I mean, is that they’re generally a bit more in touch with their emotions. They spend a lot more time thinking about them, or forcing them out when it’s needed for a scene, than men like me do, who would rather chew off their tongues than cry.

Mind you, I’ve still had my share of breakdowns, but I’m hardly proud of those. And generally speaking it doesn’t take a whole lot to set me off, but this time I had nothing. Perhaps that was better, or it would have been a right spectacle. I held Nigel, patted his back, eventually helped him to sit down and then he just petered out. He didn’t even apologise.

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