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before she returns, he feels the disappointment, self-blame, hanging in the air, but it does not seem irreparable. It is nothing that faith cannot fix.

    He is parking up at the hospital when Hari calls him. It is close to ten and there has been no word from the hospital. He figures he should muscle in on the ward so he can be present when the doctor arrives. He has pulled himself together. Looks respectable. His shoulder is steady, ready to take her weight.
    â€˜You’ll have to be quick, mate. I’m about to go into a meeting.’
    The work brush-off is a default setting they are attuned to, nothing that can be picked up on. His tone is curt, and vaguely irritated. They all behave like this between nine and six.
    â€˜Oh. I thought you’d be at the hospital.’
    â€˜Why would I be at the hospital?’
    â€˜Because of Claud. You called me last night, remember?’
    It feels as if someone has drawn a curtain, making the hint of a secondary unease – headache to a bellyache – tangible. He remembers the close noise of the steakhouse restaurant, a birthday party on the table next to him, of having to move towards the revolving doors and still shouting to be heard. He remembers gabbling about how scared he was. Crying. What he cannot recall is Hari’s voice, or pulling up his number. He could have been talking to anyone.
    â€˜I probably shouldn’t even be calling, but I just wanted to see if you guys were ok. If there’s anything I can do.’
    Men do not have best friends the way women do. It is too co-dependent a state, one that can overwhelm the basic masculine need for secrets and freedoms. But if pushed, he would admit that Hari falls somewhere in that area, solid and omnipotent. Hari brought him and Claud together in the first place. Match-made his new work colleague with his university buddy, something that seems to have given him a vested interest in their marriage. Makes him wonder now, about the crying, whether it was actually Hari’s he remembers, and not his?
    He showered Hari with thanks in those early days. Thanks for working with this amazing woman he couldn’t keep his hands off. You’re a mate. Thanks for weaning him off those shady nightclub girls he fruitlessly chased for most of his twenties. He gave thanks for every time she laughed at him and his badly constructed jokes whichstill remain all incidentals and no punch-line. When she applauded his cooking, and for not assuming he made curry every night of the week.
    He thanked her for the pawing and growling that came after dinner, and often before. For the little sounds she made. The little sounds he made. For being obsessed with her red hair, especially the way it looked when it caught the lamplight in the bedroom, deep, concentrated, as if her head had already been cast in bronze, timeless and luminescent. For not wanting to be away from her, for needing to catch every word she said, whether flighty stream of consciousness or good, plain sense. He thanked him for hooking him up with a girl who was cleverer, who was on a faster career path and earned more. Who spoke with experience when she said that it was better to sit things out with his firm than look to be the big fish in smaller ponds. Who did not shy away from talking about money, but equally did not allow it to become the elephant in the room. Thanked him for the energy, the whirlwind. Days speeding past towards languid, dreamy weekends, a perfect mix of domesticity and fantasy. Thanked him for her silliness, that she was a goofball for all her careerist seriousness. That she was always up for a spontaneous water fight, and karaoke, but drew the line at descending into sickly baby voices with him. But most of all, he thanked Hari for putting her in his universe, wondering how he could have previously existed without her. He was soppy with love, then.
    When he was finishing his master’s during his early twenties, he was smacked around