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come to be living here. His previous girlfriend (who I suspected was the only real girlfriend he had ever had) had rented a room for a year so he had often stayed over. Then we blinked and she was gone and somehow he was still there, digging himself into the smallest room, which was on the second floor, then gradually colonizing the empty room next door. Although he had no job and couldn’t pay the rent, no one had the heart or the necessary steel to throw him out – perhaps because he didn’t look much like a Dario. He had untidy ginger hair and thick freckles; his teeth were slightly crooked and when he smiled he seemed like a goofy little boy. In the end, Miles came to an agreement with him: that he should renovate the house, top to bottom, in return for living there. I don’t think it was such a good deal for Miles. As far as I could tell, Dario spent most of his time smoking weed, reading astrology columns, watching daytime TV, playing games on other people’s computers and doodling on walls with stiff-bristled paintbrushes that he wasn’t scrupulous enough about cleaning or replacing.
    Davy was the most recent member of the household, being here just a couple of months, along with Owen. He was a carpenter and builder. A real one, not like Dario. Despite the disadvantage of not being Polish, he had plenty of work. Enough of it was outside so that he was lightly tanned. He had light-coloured hair, which fell thickly over his shoulders, and grey eyes. He was good-looking, but he didn’t seem to know he was, which I found charming. He had the anxious manner of a new boy in the house, but also a nice smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes, and when he arrived I had let myself think, Perhaps? and then decided probably not. Sex in the house felt like a taboo, and my experience with Miles was an awful warning.
    And then there was Owen Sullivan, sitting across from me right now. With his pale skin, his straight, shoulder-length dark hair, and his wide-set, almost-black eyes, he had a faintly Oriental air, though as far as I knew all his ancestors had been Welsh. He was a photographer. He hawked his portfolio round magazines and got the occasional commission. But what he really wanted was to do his own stuff. He had once said he hated magazine work. I had giggled and said then it was lucky he got so little of it. He hadn’t replied but he had given me such a sharp look that I had realized you couldn’t safely tease him where his work was concerned. He used to watch people as if he was sizing them up for a photograph, checking the light, framing them. I sometimes wondered if he really saw, really listened to what they had to say.
    ‘Seven ages of man,’ said Dario, dreamily. ‘Seven seas, seven continents…’
    ‘That’s not right.’
    ‘Listen,’ said Miles. ‘I hate to break into this, but it’s very rare that we’re all together like this. Just the seven of us. Don’t you dare start again, Dario.’
    ‘You’re right, it is rare,’ said Davy. ‘Why don’t we have a group photo to mark it?’
    ‘We even have an official photographer.’
    ‘I don’t do snaps,’ said Owen, with finality.
    ‘Let’s not forget he’s an artist,’ I said sarcastically.
    Davy just smiled. ‘I’ll take it,’ he said.
    ‘My camera’s in the drawer over there,’ said Miles, wearily.
    Davy stood up and pulled it open. ‘It’s not here. You must have moved it.’
    ‘Someone’s nabbed it, more like, and forgotten to put it back.’
    ‘I’ve got one upstairs,’ said Davy.
    ‘Let’s just forget it,’ Mick was starting to say, but Davy was out of the room and bounding up the stairs two at a time.
    A silence settled over us. Outside, a car horn blared several times and then we heard footsteps running down the road. A door slammed upstairs.
    ‘Who else thinks this lamb tastes like dogfood?’ said Dario.
    ‘What does dogfood taste like?’
    ‘Like this.’
    Dogfood or not, there was the sound of chewing and