Their relationship had been petering out when Justin was offered a golden promotion opportunity at a hospital trust in the north-east. He’d dropped this bombshell at his sister’s wedding, at which Tara’s mind had been made up anyway when the bride threw the bouquet directly at her and she’d accidentally elbowed a junior bridesmaid in the face, trying to avoid it. After that, their engagement was over in the time it had taken for Justin to calculate how much she owed him for the washing machine he was graciously leaving in their rented house.

Tara stuffed a brown envelope with charity circulars, a Save the Date from one of Justin’s friends (clearly not a close friend) and his alumni magazine from Edinburgh University.

Edinburgh was David’s old university too; he had his degree framed on the wall. Tara stared at the cover – fresh-faced students engaged in some sort of performance art – and a thought occurred to her out of nowhere.

Was David one of The Four Ceps?

Ironically – for someone who now displayed minimal sense of humour as a badge of honour – Justin had been in a med-school comedy group at university: ‘Footlights but for real people,’ as he put it. The Four Ceps (there were twelve of them, ha ha) had done two Edinburgh Festivals, and garnered zero reviews, but the way Justin talked about his ‘comedy background’, you’d think he’d turned down his own BBC Two sitcom in favour of a career in hospital trust management.

Tara opened up her laptop again. She’d never actually met any of The Four Ceps but Justin had talked about them a lot in the early days of their relationship, before some of their ‘routines’ became socially unacceptable. Ben, Ryan, Tom, Dave, the other ones …

Justin had blocked her on Facebook – or she’d blocked him, it happened very quickly – so she couldn’t check whether he was still friends with David, but Google Images threw up a handful of images of ‘The Four Ceps Edinburgh’ and she peered at the screen.

Baby-faced men in white lab coats, posing with a kooky selection of props. Justin was in the middle, his blond hair backcombed into Einstein-like craziness. There was so little of it left now that Tara felt almost nostalgic on its behalf.

Then – wow. Tara peered closer. Yes! That was definitely him, David Dalloway, back row, far left. There were no details on the web page other than that they were medical students from Edinburgh University, but it was him: a bit more brown fringe falling into his eyes, a bit less multi-diploma confidence, but yes. Dr David.

Oh no, thought Tara, as half-forgotten snippets of Justin’s witterings gathered together like iron filings to form some actual facts. If that’s him, then Dr David must be HYPNO Dave.