He wishes he could talk to his best friend. He tries to call Fergus again. Again it cuts straight to voicemail. Aidan doesn’t quite know what to say so he doesn’t say anything at all. He calls the airline but he’s passed from department to department and nobody gives him a clear answer.

The passenger door opens. She slides into the seat.

‘I wasn’t sure if you’d come,’ she says, but, as she meets his eye, he knows that she was confident that he would.

She’s wearing a crimson tank top with yellow stars dotted over it, black ribbon sewn around the armholes. Lucy has a jumper with a similar pattern and the sight of it is like a flashing red beacon.

Look at us-look at us-look at us.

He allows her gaze to hold him.

‘I can’t…’ He trails off. He can’t carry on? He can’t stop? He doesn’t know what he wants.

‘You’re a good man. A kind man,’ Stephanie had said earlier that day.

If only she knew. If only everyone knew what he was. What he was doing.

He thinks of Tyler again. His stomach had plummeted with shame when he thought he’d been caught, although out of all the secrets Aidan has, being here, with her, is probably not the worst.

What if Connor finds out?

A good man. A kind man.

Aidan is neither and he couldn’t bear it if his son discovered the truth.

Aidan hates himself for getting into this. For not being strong enough to get out of it. He thinks of Lucy on the phone earlier, lost without her career, wanting to talk to another adult, him. Wanting reassurance.

Instead, he fed her lies.

He needs to find out the truth.

He swallows hard. Gathers his voice and asks firmly, ‘Did you deliberately leave some knickers under the seat of the car last night?’

Aidan hopes he is wrong but knows she is desperate, unhappy, scared of losing him.

‘Just a little warning of how quickly your life could fall apart.’

‘This has to end.’ He is adamant.

‘Don’t say that. I could make things very… difficult for you. For everyone you love. Their friends and family too. If you end this, I can promise you, someone is going to get hurt.’

Now she has been rejected, cast aside from the one she loves, she wants to destroy them all.

Aidan is close to tears, emasculated, wishing he could breathe in comfort from Lancelot’s blanket, breathe in strength. Instead, he tries to pull himself together, because that’s what men do, isn’t it?

‘I’m sorry you’ve been hurt,’ he tells her and he is. ‘But please don’t hurt my wife she’s—’

‘Oblivious in her own little perfect world.’

‘Her world is far from perfect.’ Aidan’s hackles rise. ‘She’s a good person.’

‘And I’m not?’