‘What are you doing around here?’ he asked.

‘I’m—’ she paused. ‘I’m just going for a walk.’

‘OK, well, good to see you,’ he said, and she could see from his face that he was pleased to find a natural break in the conversation, an excuse to walk away. She could imagine him cursing himself for having called out to her. She could almost hear him returning to the office and pulling out a chair beside Serena. You won’t believe who I just saw, he’d say. Acting really strange.

Turning, she walked as fast as she could away from the direction of KCS until she reached Buckingham Palace, allowing her knees to buckle as she sat at a bench overlooking the hordes of tourists peering through the gates, like hecklers rattling the bars of a prison.

When she heard her phone ringing in her bag, she pulled it out and saw Ivan’s number flashing on the screen.

‘Hello?’

‘You didn’t call back,’ Ivan said. He sounded hurt.

She ran a hand through her hair. ‘I’m sorry, I’ve had a lot on.’

‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said, straight away, as if he had been sitting with whatever he was about to say for a long time and needed to get it off his chest.

‘If we’re going to do this, we need to do it properly.’

‘What does that mean?’ She knew exactly what it meant; what she had always known, on some level, that he’d ask.

‘I want you to move in with me.’

The silence that followed was filled with so many emotions that she couldn’t pinpoint a single one. In the end, the only answer she could find was the truth.

‘It’s not that simple.’

‘Why not?’

‘It’s just not. I have other commitments. My job …’

‘What has moving in with me got to do with your work?’

‘It’s all-consuming, Ivan. I’m away so much and— I want my independence.’

‘Your independence?’ His voice was disbelieving.

She had nothing left to say. She felt empty, used up. So she said, ‘Can I think about it?’

This time it was he who went quiet. ‘Right,’ he said at last. ‘Well, it doesn’t sound like I have much of a choice.’

For the rest of the day, she kept walking, stopping only to buy a new SIM card and phone, with the number she would give to Ivan to stem the constant fear that he would call while she was with Tom, or vice versa.