So we drove to Devil's Dyke.

This was neither my choice nor Thom's but, the supply of O running short, I had phoned my dealer, K, and found myself acquiescing to his peculiar desire to rendezvous in ever more picaresque surrounds, even though we know precisely where the other lives. In case Thom got suspicious, I had thrown a kite into the back of the car.

Seeing K. with a pair of binoculars, I left Thom in the queue for an ice-cream and, handing over enough money to buy a small car, took the O and merrily waved it around with sufficient abandon for no one to notice. But K, as ever, wanted a chat. I have a book for you, he said.
Seeing the title, Mallarme and Circumstance, I was quickly reminded that twenty years earlier a promising academic career awaited him on delivery of a dissertation K. only ever finished in the delicacy of his own mind. As I remember it concerned numinosity and negation in the turn of the century Symbolists', the silences of whom morphed into K.'s own. With Thom waiting, I went straight for his jugular. Had he read it? No, why not? Was this an emblem of all his lost hopes being palmed off onto me, grateful, as I was.

No, I just thought you might like it.

I was in no mood for his passivity but our long acquaintance, and my continued supply of O, required the proper response. But I simply didn't have it and so, unwilling to absorb the wounds we'd suddenly slashed open, I just nodded and walked swiftly back to my son who seemed, at that moment, to be very slowly handing over his own money.