After a couple of minutes she stood, suddenly unsteady on her feet, and moved towards the stairs, her toes pressing uncertainly on the treads. On the landing there were two doors directly above the kitchen, in the wall adjacent to her and Tom’s room. It was her own teenage bedroom split in two with a flimsy wall demarcating Sadie’s space and Callum’s, the single renovation they had managed since Tom had moved in.

Pushing open the door to Sadie’s room, for a moment her eyes struggled to find her daughter in the darkness. And then they did and the stillness of her body, the shard of moonlight slicing across her features – Tom’s features – pressed at Gabriela, like the blade of a knife, so that she had to turn away before she felt herself bleed.

‘Gabriela? I said how was the leaving party?’

Tom was still standing in front of her with a cup of tea, and she could hear Sadie and Callum squabbling in the hall.

She had been prepared to apologise for her part in the argument the day before, but it seemed to Tom it was long past. How did he do that? How did he so readily move on from those moments, as if nothing had ever happened?

‘How much did you drink? You look rough as arses.’

‘Thanks so much,’ she replied, the normality of his tone helping to smooth the juddering transition from last night to present day.

This role play of theirs was one she knew well and she played her part with ease. ‘That was actually the precise look I was going for. With any luck I might also smell as well.’

Making a face of concentration, Tom leaned into her. ‘I mean, a bit, yes.’

Pulling back from him slightly, instinctively fearful of what he might sense, she met his eyes and smiled before looking away, feigning a distraction on the other side of the room.

And yet, despite the feeling that followed her around the house, the truth was that she really didn’t have much to feel guilty about in relation to her evening with Ivan. She hadn’t done anything, had she? Not really. It would have been so easy to say yes when he asked her back to his place. It would have been the easiest thing in the world. But when he leaned in to kiss her good night, once she’d made her excuses about an early meeting the next day, she had turned her face so that his lips pressed against her cheek instead of her mouth, the slight scratch of his stubble brushing against her hair as he pulled away respectfully.

‘Well, Gabriela, thank you for the company.’

Was she disappointed that he hadn’t pushed harder, that he hadn’t expected more from her as he helped her into a taxi, placing a note into the driver’s hand, ignoring her insistence that she could take the bus?