He had laid the table for six and put himself at the end of it nearest the door.
"This is obscene," said Freddie happily, sitting down without being asked where. "Emil. Mate. This is genuinely obscene. What is it you actually do?"
"Logistics."
"Nobody does logistics."
"Everybody does logistics," said Emil. "It is only that most people call it something else."
They arranged themselves the way they had arranged themselves at sixteen, which is a thing groups do without noticing and cannot be talked out of.
Freddie at the head, because Freddie was always at the head, and had been head boy, and had gone into property on his father's money and then out of it again into something to do with land, and spoke about both as though they had happened to somebody luckier.
Jonah on his right. Jonah had been Freddie's right hand for eighteen years and had never once been asked whether he wanted the job. He had forearms like a man who went to the gym to have somewhere to be, and a way of laughing a beat after Freddie that nobody but Saskia had ever found strange.
Nina next, phone face down now, watchful, beautiful in the specific way of a woman who has decided exactly how much of the room she intends to hold.
Then Saskia, who taught year fours in Leeds and had said almost nothing since the door opened.
And Rory at the far end, pouring, refilling, telling the story about the ferry again, doing the thing Rory had done since primary school, which was to fill any silence before anybody could look into it.
"Do you know what I think is amazing," said Freddie, around the lamb. "I think it's amazing that we're all still — this. Eighteen years. Most people lose everyone."
"We are very lucky," said Nina.
"We are. And Emil —" Freddie raised his glass and looked down the table with enormous warmth. "Emil we lost for a bit and got back, which is even better."
"Is it," said Saskia.
It went out into the room and lay there.
"Sorry?"
"Nothing." She was looking at her plate. "Nothing, sorry. It's the drive."
Emil watched her for slightly longer than he needed to and then smiled and picked up the wine.
He was, they would all have said, extraordinary that night. He asked Jonah about his knee. He remembered that Nina's mother had been ill and asked after her by name. He let Freddie tell the story about Ibiza and laughed in the right place, and when Rory knocked a glass over he had a cloth in his hand before the wine reached the edge of the table.
He drank nothing at all. Saskia noticed that too.
At one in the morning Rory said, "We should do a toast," and everybody groaned, and did it anyway.
"To Emil," said Freddie. "Who has done frighteningly well, and who has forgiven us for being absolute animals at school, which he did not have to do."
There was a half-second in which nobody moved.
Then Nina laughed, and Jonah laughed after her, and Rory said animals in a fond disbelieving way as though it were a word from a nursery rhyme, and five glasses went up.
"To Emil."
"To Emil," said Emil, and drank water.