This time David stopped for a lot longer, and blinked, hard. He was pushing his thumbnails into the pads of his fingertips, so hard that the skin around them turned white.

‘Did you find him?’ Tara asked.

‘Eventually. He was exactly where he said he was – beside a willow tree, in a ditch by the golf course. I carried him home, trying to talk to him all the way, but he’d gone.’ David stared ahead. ‘The worst thing was, when I tried to tell my mum about it, my father sent me to a psychiatrist. Things weren’t … great for a few years after that.’

Tara grabbed David’s hand and squeezed it. After a second, his fingers squeezed hers back, a strong grip. A ripple ran between them, more comforting than words. They sat in silence for a while. Tara didn’t know what to say, but she believed him. She recognized the vulnerability of someone who’s said more than they meant to and realized what it sounds like, spoken aloud.

‘I’m so sorry, David,’ she said. Whether it was all in his mind or not, his pain, twenty years on, was written in his hunched shoulders, his wretched expression.

‘No, I’m sorry. But that’s why I don’t try to connect with lost animals.’ He forced out a smile, but it was bleak. ‘The responsibility is … horrible. It’s selfish, I know. I’m not proud of it, and I’ll do everything I can to help in any other way, but not that.’

Tara hadn’t expected this, especially not without half a bottle of Hero’s Midsummer Gin under their belts. There was a confessional atmosphere between the two of them, as fragile and unexpected as a soap bubble floating down the main street.

‘Do your parents really have no idea you can do this?’ It seemed churlish to do anything other than support him.

‘We’ve never discussed it as such. Mum’s good with animals – she claimed the same birds came to our garden every year. Dad, definitely not. He’s Scottish, a Free Presbyterian, very strict on what he calls woo-woo nonsense. Won’t even have horoscopes in the house. So, no. As far as they’re concerned, talking to dogs is just something I grew out of, like an imaginary friend. I didn’t want another dog after Bruno, and we didn’t get one. I closed down that side of me for a long time.’

‘So what changed?’

‘Ha! Well. Funny story, actually.’ David’s mood lifted a little and he ran his hand through his hair. ‘My ex wanted a rescue dog. Trial run for a baby, she said. So we adopted Churchill, a Spaniel cross. One night I was walking Churchill round Clapham Common and, out of the blue, he asked me when the other nice man was coming round to play again. The man who played with Imogen. My ex.’

‘No!’