Van is almost always already in the bar when I arrive, which implies either impressive foreknowledge or simply a great deal of time spent in bars - and my research suggests the latter is not wrong but not the whole story. He asks questions about places I've been the way you ask questions when you already know the answers and are interested in whether someone has noticed the right details: about the bunker in Beacon Wood, the ash tree growing through it, the wires I couldn't trace against the trees. He always asks if Shad kept me safe, phrasing it as though the alternative is not a real category he's willing to consider. He refers to the Chronicles as "the project" and when I bring him a completed section he is - genuinely, without performance - excited in the way only someone who has been working seriously at something for a very long time can be excited by incremental progress. He is nothing if not a slave driver. The man exhausts me.