Old Friends

"Nick gave a snuffly laugh from the back seat, and thought what a terrible little operator Jasper was, oiling his way into the family with his forelock and his dodgy voice; and Wani too - how flawless he was, making his quick social reconaissance, everything hidden from Toby, his old friend. He looked at the back of their heads, Wani's black curls, Toby's cropped and sunburned nape, and felt for an eerie moment what strangers they were to him, and perhaps to eachother.

They were only boys, but the height and territorial presumptions of the Range Rover threw them into relief as men of the world, Toby sporting and unimaginative, Wani languid, with the softness and vigilance of money about him. Perhaps being old friends didn't mean very much, they shared assumptions rather then lives. "

- Alan Hollinghurst, The Line Of Beauty