Friday we converged on the Tate, with the snaking queues for grilled sandwiches, with the cups of water selling at one pound a pop, we converged on the Tate, with hipsters as far as the eye could see. There were bands playing, Friday night at the Tate, and there were girls with pink hair, girls with blue hair, boys in red shirts, there were fishnet stockings and knee-length shorts. There was a man with triangled paper horns clipped to his head, and he turned out to be Famous. There was Agus, with a smile both shy and wide; there was Morgan, with new shoes; there was John, who spoke, ravishingly, about Anthony Powell and a dance to the music of time. We never knew what band was playing, Friday night at the Tate, but it was nice, and sometimes they were good enough to bop your head to. Dan was telling me about Cornwall, about seagulls with sunglasses. He was telling me about sailing, and about crewing for an elderly gent with unlimited means. He was telling me about the moonlight and Saint Malo.

It was just me and Nai, afterwards, and we walked down the Pimlico street to the water. “Look,” he said, pointing at a lit-up building across the river, and he sang: “Nung-nuh-nuh-nuh-nung nung-nung-nung nung-nuh-nuh-nuh-nung.” “Ya,” I said, “dunno,” so he had to act it out with his hands for a gun. “Pierce Brosnan lah!” he said, just like Pierce Brosnan would have done, looking down spirals unto spirals unto spirals. “Mmm,” I said, “yah. And then?” He made it so you could see the speedboat whizzing by the MI5 building lit up orangeyellow as if by the sheer power of boiled sweets.

Marc came running up to us like a secret secret agent out of the night, and then Nai made the call, and then we sat around and looked out for a man on a motorbike. Nai was fidgeting. “It’s like I’m seeing an old flame,” he said, and he was jiggling his knee.

There is background to this love story. Once upon a time, Nai lived in Pimlico, which hosts, it is said, the most perfect fried chicken from PFC. Do you know what PFC stands for? Say it with me: Perfect Fried Chicken. Nai’s happy days of ordering PFC take-out were put to an end when he moved out of their delivery zone, but Friday night, after the Tate, we were smack dab in the middle of the OK Corral.

You understand.

Friday night, after the Tate, while the police boats went left to right then right to left again on the water in front of the MI5 building, Nai made the call. I don’t know how the boy’d managed to get them to agree to deliver to a park bench on the bank of the Thames – maybe he’d sung the James Bond song – but he’d done it. “They were really into it!” he said, marvelling. “You could hear them flipping through the street directory!”

For a good many moments the street was clear of delivery men on motorbikes, though, and, closing in on ten o’clock, some of us were very hungry. And then, it seemed, all of a sudden, he was there, a white helmet and a white box on his motorcycle, and he may well have been in shining silver on a white horse, we were so gleeful to see him. Nai crossed the green to meet him while Marc and I hung back, discreet. They met under a streetlamp. They gave each other big, thumpy pats on the back. They were chatting, smiling. Our hearts swelled and glowed as if we were aging relatives at a Chinese betrothal.

“That was nice!” I said, when Nai sauntered back to us. “I think he was laughing at me,” Nai said. “I think he thought I was homeless.”

There were three boxes that said, each of them: HOT & TASTY. There were little Styrofoam containers of coleslaw and brown sauce. There was a giant bottle of Pepsi. It was some years since I’d had a Pepsi, and it was some years since I’d had fried chicken, so I said, as I reached for a chip, “This is gonna be great.” The first bite of chip tasted of nothing. The second, finishing bite tasted of thrice-used oil in a crusty deep-fryer, of a strangled, desperate fowl fighting its way out of your throat. “Oh,” I said, and then, swallowing, thinking: “Oh.”

The chicken, though, hats off to you, Nai, was, I mean, come on, perfect. Just salty enough, just greasy enough, and eaten, standing barefoot in the bald grass, with the Thames and the boats and the MI5. We licked our fingers, and then Marc squatted on his haunches and said: “Now I wanna vomit.” “Yah!” Nai said, “that’s part of the experience!” “I feel okay,” I said, and they said, “You need to eat one more piece.” I may have flinched.

We sat about, then, because what else can you do after fried chicken, and looked at the lights across the river. Friday night settled in around us. I had goosebumps on bare arms.