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one ever saw him here these days. The clientele had changed. These people were young, or still knew how to pass as young. Paul had brought Genie here just after her graduation, to celebrate. He’d looked around at these unknown faces and said something odd about wasted talent: about knowing you’d wasted your talent when you turned the bend – when you began to recognise all the places you had passed on your way to whatever point it was that you’d started going backwards. Whatever he’d meant by that. He’d been smoking a lot of weed at the time. And that jacket! It was the one she and Mam had got him for his sixteenth. He’d wanted a leather jacket, the heavy, creaking, rock-god kind, but they’d got him a leatherette bomber from Ridley Road. That was the time Paul had taken to wearing it again. Twenty-six and as skinny as he’d been as a teenager. He’d worn it so often that in the end the leatherette flaked away when he rubbed it, like dead skin. And now she remembered something else he’d said that night. About how lately almost everyone he saw reminded him of someone he’d once known. A lot of things Paul said had been lost at sea. They washed up now and again.
    Sol had told Genie he would see her here after his meeting, and, when she felt someone kiss the top of her head and looked up, it was him.
    I still can’t believe I found you, Genie said.
    Were you looking for me?
    Well, not quite.
    Then you didn’t find me. You just bumped into me. Nothing unusual about that.
    I guess not, said Genie.
    They talked about how they’d been. Genie asked about the meetings. He looked better for going, she said. Though she thought he looked as delicate as he always had. Pale and thin. Dark and unshaven. A smudged charcoal sketch of a man.
    Two years this month, he said. I had to give all of that up. And how is Paul?
    That’s why I wanted to meet, Genie said. She told him about the night she’d last seen her brother. Their night out in the club. How she’d ended up in hospital. When Sol pressed for details Genie told him how she’d taken a pill for the first time. How she had nearly drowned from the inside: water intoxication, the hospital had said.
    And Paul had been with her that night?
    Yes, said Genie, but she’d lost him. They’d heard nothing of him since. He’d run off somewhere.
    Sol put his head in his hands. Don’t tell me he gave you the pill.
    Of course he did. That’s why I’m worried about him. It’s been three weeks now. I want him to know I’m OK. That I don’t blame him.
    And then Genie surprised herself by telling Sol something she hadn’t even realised she’d been thinking: that maybe Paul’s disappearance had been inevitable; maybe it was something he’d been mulling over for a while. Maybe what happened that night had just pushed him over the edge.
    That’s possible, Sol admitted. I haven’t seen him since our big fight. I thought he was running out of options then but, from what I heard from Eloise, things got worse for him. Isometimes think he might have had a different life if he’d never met me.
    You can’t take the blame. You did meet him at a rave.
    No, I didn’t. He’d never been to one until he met me. He never told you the real story of how we met, did he? He was too ashamed.
    Tell me, said Genie.

(x) Sol’s Story
    We met in hospital. It was 1990. We were participants on a medical trial. Don’t judge him till you hear what he wanted the money for. Six weeks, we spent, sleeping next to each other. He’d told your mum he was off in France grape-picking or something. I remember the time I first noticed him. We’d only just started the trial. It was in the early hours of the morning. I couldn’t sleep. I opened my eyes to find the bloke in the next bed looking at me. His eyes were open, staring straight into mine, shining like an animal’s in the dark. Then they shut again. Weird. Don’t know if he’d even been properly awake. The next day neither of us