"If I wasn't here, you could have asked me to come home," Neil says, soft but emphatic. Caleb's his boyfriend, but Rosie is one of his best friends in the world, as close as any of the boys back home he thinks, and if that doesn't mean coming at her beck and call he doesn't know what it means.

He knows he's spent a lot of time being absent, too, and it should be different. Caleb, at least, would know and understand that, he thinks.