‘Let’s get a takeaway and go back to Maitland Road,’ she said. ‘Then you can meet the others. What do you say?’

‘Have I passed?’

‘She was meant to consult with Astrid and me first,’ said Miles, in a bit of a sour voice.

‘Sorry,’ said Pippa, and winked at me.

‘Shall I leave you to talk about me among yourselves for a few minutes?’

‘No need,’ said Astrid, standing up and pulling on a leather jacket. ‘You three go ahead. I’ll bike and meet you at the house.’

We walked outside, into the darkness. I watched Astrid as she stood under the street-lamp to unlock her bike. She clipped on her helmet, hung her canvas satchel over her shoulder and swung one slim leg over the cross-bar. Her breath smoked in the air. Everything about her was fluid and streamlined. Then I saw that Miles was watching her too.

We took a cab. Miles phoned for the takeaway from the taxi, and we stopped a few streets from the house to collect it. We walked back together with two paper carrier-bags steaming with food and two bottles of wine that I insisted on buying from a shop we passed. I had never been to this part of London before and I looked around me, trying to get a sense of it. The road we were on was one of those arterial routes that cut through the city, full of traffic-lights and clogged with cars and lorries. I could tell at once that it was a run-down area, the kind I’d come to London to get away from. The shops were strange and old and several were boarded-up; there were high-rise blocks on either side of us. I noticed that many faces were black. But the streets running off this road looked a mixture of raffish and rich, lined with tall old houses behind their iron gates and little front gardens.

‘Nearly there,’ said Pippa.

We turned down a long, tree-shaded street, then off it on to another, where a group of teenage boys were kicking a ball in and out of pools of light and parked cars. Ahead, a high-rise cut off the horizon. To the left was the entrance to a scruffy park.

‘Here we are!’

The house must have been grand when it was built. It was three storeys high and double-fronted, with bay windows, a small garden at the front and wide steps leading up to the door. But I could tell at once that it needed a lot of work doing to it. Pointing, for a start. And slates were coming off the roof. The window-frames were cracked, the paint peeling. Years of neglect had eaten into the structure, rotting the house like an illness. I saw all of this even as I was saying, in a polite voice, what a great place it was.

‘Don’t mind the mess,’ said Miles, as he opened the front door.

‘We’re here!’ yelled Pippa. ‘With food!’

Astrid came down the stairs. She had changed into jeans and a pale green T-shirt. Her feet were bare and I saw that her toenails were painted orange and she had a silver chain round her left ankle. ‘I beat you to it,’ she said. ‘And everyone’s here. I’ve told them about you.’

‘Right,’ I said. ‘Good.’

‘Are you nervous?’

‘A bit,’ I said. ‘I’d like to live here. That puts me in a weak position.’

It was the right answer; I’d thought it would be. She looked at me appreciatively and put one hand briefly on my shoulder. ‘Come into the lion’s den.’

We trooped down the stairs in single file. I could hear male voices and I suddenly realized I hadn’t asked anything about the other occupants. But it was too late now because there we were, standing in the large, messy semi-basement where three men were sitting round the long table, and Astrid was introducing me, while Pippa slid chipped and unmatching plates round the table, then dumped a handful of cutlery in the middle.

‘Right, everyone,’ said Astrid, and silence fell. Everyone looked at me. This first impression would be important, I knew.

‘Hi,’ I said, and raised a hand.

‘This,’ she said, ‘is Davy.’

I knew that first impressions would be important. I smiled at each of them. I looked each of them in the eye. I made mental notes.

‘First of all,’ Astrid said, turning to a scrawny, freckly man, who looked like the carrot-headed runt in my class at secondary school whom everyone had picked on, ‘this is Dario.’

‘Hi, Dario,’ I said. ‘Pleased to meet you.’

‘Are you?’ His pupils were dilated and his words ran into each other. Stoned, I thought.

‘What? Well, yes. At least, I will be if you decide I can live here.’ There was a ripple of amusement and I felt my confidence grow.

‘And this…’ Astrid gestured towards a slightly older man with a buzzcut, who was wearing a thin grey T-shirt that seemed too tight for his stocky body. Something about his pale-blue gaze made me feel uneasy. ‘This is Mick.’

He grunted something. That was all I’d get.

‘And last but not least…’

I turned towards the third man, smiling and holding out my hand. I knew at once that I didn’t like him, not one bit. I didn’t like his long dark hair, or his high cheekbones, or the hooded lids over his dark, secretive eyes. I didn’t like his fucking beauty or the way he looked dreamy, as if he was seeing something I couldn’t. And I didn’t like the way Astrid was staring at him now; there was a sudden glow about her that was like heat being given off. Nor the way he looked back, a glance passing between them and electricity in the air.

We shook hands.

‘Owen,’ he said.

‘Hello, Owen.’

I took a seat between Astrid and Dario, uncorked the two bottles of wine and poured everyone a glass. Pippa lit three stubby white candles. I listened, nodded, laughed in all the right places. I was modest, appreciative. I patted Dario on the back when his prawn went down the wrong way. I helped Astrid clear away the foil containers. I said I wouldn’t mind dealing with the wasps’ nest under the eaves when summer came. It turned out to be as simple as that. I was in.

Chapter Twenty-seven

I arrived the following Saturday morning. Miles took me up to show me my room, which had been rejected by six other people. It was right at the top of the house, overlooking the street.

‘It’s a bit bare,’ said Miles. ‘We haven’t really got round to doing it up. Dario promised but… you know…’

It was extremely bare and, because the radiator hadn’t been turned on for weeks or months, cold. There was a threadbare carpet, a bed with just a mattress, a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling, a curtain rail with no curtains.

‘It’s perfect,’ I said, because it was. Previously I’d been staying in different places. Squatting with workmates. Sometimes even on site in a sleeping-bag.

‘Have you got much stuff?’ Miles asked.

‘A few things.’

I had a laundry bag full of clothes and that was about it. So I went to the high street and found a funny old housing-supply shop where I bought a duvet and a cover to wrap round it, a pillow and a pillow-case to wrap round it, a sheet, a towel. Then I walked along the street and went into a little bookshop. I browsed through a section devoted to psychology, religion, self-help and gardening and found a book called Success in Friendship: A User’s Manual. When I handed it to the girl at the counter she looked at me curiously.

‘It’s for a friend,’ I said.

‘Really?’ she said.

‘That was a joke.’

‘It’s seven ninety-nine,’ she said, not laughing.

I didn’t really care whether or not she thought I was the sort of person who needed a book to tell him how to find friends. That wasn’t what I wanted it for or, at least, not exactly. I wanted to leave my old life behind and to do that I didn’t have to create a fake birth certificate and steal someone’s name. It was very simple. All I needed was never to go home again, never to phone home again. What was the problem with that? In the end my old life would catch up with me, the way it generally does, like something stuck to your shoe, but in the meantime Maitland Road was going to be my experiment. I was going to impersonate a normal housemate who got on with everybody. I was going to treat it like a technical exercise. That was why I needed a book. It would give me a part to play.