Page 116 of Crosswind

He looks up. Takes me in. "You're doing that thing."

"What thing." I look at the ceiling.

"The thing where you're pleased with yourself about something and haven't said what it is yet."

I put my phone face down on the sofa.

"I'm just sitting here," I say.

He gives me the look. Goes back to his screen.

He is, unfortunately, correct. I am doing the thing.

I look at the ceiling. Switzerland is going to be excellent and Jan is going to be impossible about the skiing and I cannot wait.

On a Saturday in early December we have people over.

This has never happened before in this apartment. Until recently it was Jan's apartment, arranged around one person. Tonight it is ours, and it is full of people and noise — Jan in the kitchen doing something that smells extraordinary, me in the sitting room with Lars and Tomas and Eline and Mia and Tom, feeling, without exaggeration, like the luckiest person in Amsterdam.

Lars and Tomas find each other immediately in the way of people who have both spent years being the sensible friend and recognise their own. Mia and Eline are on the sofa talking about something that involves a lot of gesturing. Tom has found the bookshelf and is reading the spines with the expression of someone taking notes.

"He reorganised them," I say, when Tom glances at me.

"By subject and then alphabetically?" Tom says.

"Yes." I don't elaborate. There is nothing to add.

"Of course he did," Tom says. And keeps reading.

Jan emerges from the kitchen at some point with food and the calm of someone who has planned everything in advance and is not surprised that it is going well. Tomas catches my eye across the room and does the thing — the slight nod, the expression that means: I see it. I know.

I look at Jan.

I know, I think.

The conversation moves through the usual territory — work, the city, travel. Tomas mentions that he and Eline are going skiing in January, somewhere in Austria.

"We went last year," Eline says. "It's the only thing that makes January survivable."

"I've never been," Jan says.

A small silence around the table.

"Never?" Lars says.

"Never," Jan says. "I have also never seen the appeal. Standing on a mountain in the cold on two pieces of wood hoping not to die."

"It's not like that," Tomas says.

"It's a little like that," Jan says.

"You'd be terrified," Eline says. Not unkindly.

"Yes," Jan says. With the equanimity of someone who has made peace with his limitations. "I would be."

I am looking at Jan across the table and trying very hard not to smile. Jan catches me anyway.

"What," he says.