Ben abandons his arithmetic and looks up. There is grass in her hair and a smudge of earth on her left cheek. ‘The girls will want a Colin the Caterpillar cake.’ He blows gently into the air. ‘With candles.’

She smiles. ‘Of course they will. We can get one at Marks and Sparks in Morningside.’

He doodles a pattern of intersecting 2 and 5 symbols in his notebook. ‘I’ve been meaning to ask if you think there might be more lodgers eventually?’

Tess can see his design from across the table. ‘Probably not while you’re here.’

He draws more numbers, linking them together with swoops of his pencil. ‘You know, it’s been nearly a year since we moved in, but I’ve never felt able to ask you . . .’

‘Ask me what?’

‘Well, I’m assuming you aren’t a former prisoner, although nothing is impossible. And there are no children here with you. So that leaves . . .’

She sticks to the facts. ‘I was dumped.’

He is embarrassed at having asked the question. ‘I’m really sorry.’

‘Well, not dumped exactly. It’s a bit more complicated than that.’ She wonders how to explain in a way which won’t alienate him. ‘My ex and I always said we didn’t want children, but he changed his mind. I remember telling Fiona at the time that other people’s kids were fine, I just didn’t want any of my own.’ She decides on the spur of the moment to be totally honest. ‘I think he must have been thinking about it for a couple of years before he actually said something. With hindsight there were all sorts of clues but I couldn’t see them at the time. I think he wanted me to be the one to end it because then it would have been my fault, and not his.’

He doesn’t know what to say.

‘Pretty much overnight I went from being one half of a couple to being completely and utterly wrecked. I tried to put on a good face and pretend I was coping, but the truth is that I was suddenly unattached, or separated, or solo, or whatever you want to call it.’ Her voice drops to barely a whisper. ‘But not in my heart.’

Ben thinks about reaching out across the table, but decides against it. He picks up his pencil again and doodles a few more numbers instead. ‘When Zoe died it happened so fast, I felt as though I couldn’t breathe. One minute she was her usual self, planning trips to the beach at Portobello with the kids, and reading the paper, and drinking coffee, just doing all the normal stuff. And then she was gone in less than a week.’

Tess shakes her head. ‘I’m sorry. I’m not for a minute saying what happened to me is as bad as what you went through.’