His jovial tone smashed empty on the ridged brown carpet as we stared at him.

‘Dad!’ I scowled. ‘What about Gar? She’s your favourite too.’

My mother looked away.

Perhaps she was deciding then.

In the car on the way home, I asked my father, ‘Can I go to Bel’s when we get home?’

‘No,’ he snapped, so unlike him, ‘you can’t. It’s too late. It’s a school night. You’ve got homework.’

I sulked ferociously until I realised he hadn’t even noticed. Then I put my trainers up on the dashboard and read Just Seventeen. He didn’t tell me to stop reading that rubbish, like he usually would. He didn’t even tell me to put my feet down again.

The next week my father had to cancel the holiday to France.

Somewhere between Reading and London, fog began to drift across the road, hanging in the air like wet icing-sugar. By the time we arrived at the city’s outskirts the fog was so thick we’d reached a virtual crawl. Near the Chiswick roundabout, Seb started to put his coat on. My heart sank.

‘Can you drop me at Hammersmith tube?’ he asked.

So this was it. Another man down the tube – literally, driven off by my family history.

‘Sure,’ I said brightly, as we slid to a halt at a red light. ‘Thanks for a nice weekend.’

He laughed. ‘Is that it then?’

I looked at him. ‘I don’t know. Is it?’

‘I wouldn’t have thought so, would you?’

I smiled. ‘Okay then.’

He regarded me for a moment. ‘I don’t know what it is about you, Maggie, but you’re not at all what I expected.’

‘Oh.’ The lights turned green. ‘I’m not sure that’s a compliment.’

‘It is, babe, it is.’ He swung his bag from the back seat. ‘See you, Digby. Look after Maggie for me.’

He kissed me once, hard – and then he was gone, into the traffic, weaving elegantly through the blur of shiny-backed monsters, before disappearing into the tube. I switched the stereo back on and headed home, though I felt like I’d just left my heart in Cornwall yet again.

Monday morning in Borough Market was always quiet after the frenetic weekend, and the street was deserted as I pulled up outside the flat to unload. The cake-shop, its lights normally a welcoming beacon, was still shuttered; the fog meant I couldn’t see much further than the next lamppost. Digby had shot off the minute I’d opened the car door and I whistled for him now, a shiver coursing down my spine. I wanted to get inside quickly.