Twelve years we had known him.

Twelve.

Brian, who had stood at the front of a function room at our wedding with a piece of paper that shook, and got through two sentences, and then simply stopped and stood there for about eleven seconds with his hand over his mouth before he could carry on.

Brian, whose wife had sat with me in her own kitchen in the seventh year and not said anything useful for an hour, which was exactly right.

Brian, who was the only one of our friends who ever asked me a direct question about it and then stood still and let the answer happen.