Listlessly, I lit a cigarette and stared out at the dreary morning streets of South London. I’d crashed off my adrenaline high; now I just felt tired and sad. I watched a young mother at a bus-stop berating her toddler for taking his coat off, and then cuddling him in remorse when he cried, and I thought about my mother and how desperately I wished she was still here to hug me. I turned my phone over and over in my hand debating whether to ring Seb, but I suddenly felt all shy. I felt like I was losing all the stability in my life, and I despised myself for not being stronger, for not just being on my own when I knew I needed to be, for clutching on to another man when I wasn’t really over Alex.

‘And next up,’ Robert Elms’s distinguished voice broke into my thoughts, ‘we’ve got an exclusive interview with Oscar-tipped star and lead of the smash hit that even I enjoyed – Love All.’

‘Can you turn it up please?’ I asked the cabbie urgently.

‘So stick with me, cos coming up right after a nice bit of funky stuff’ – I waited with bated breath – ‘we’ll be welcoming the exceedingly cool James McAvoy.’

James McAvoy. Not Sebastian Rae. I stared at the driver’s bristly neck, at the red rolls of fat as Minnie Riperton began to sing sadly about love. I stared out of the window, but I didn’t see anything apart from my own stupidity reflected there. Racking my brain, I tried to think if Sebastian had ever actually said he’d played the lead, but I couldn’t recall the details now.

When we pulled up outside my father’s, I practically ran up the garden path.

‘Is Digby here? Have you found him?’

‘Oh dear.’ Jenny’s anxious shiny face spoke volumes. ‘I was really hoping – he’s not with you then?’ Her perfect hair was ruffled for once. I shook my head miserably.

‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ she intoned again, talking very fast as I followed her into the kitchen. ‘I feel like it’s all my fault, though I honestly don’t understand how on earth he got out.’ A stack of exam booklets looked precarious on the edge of the table; like a paper Tower of Pisa. Jenny pushed them to safety. ‘One minute he was here with me while I was marking the mocks, then I answered the door to the flower chap – your bouquet’s out there, by the way, it’s lovely,’ she gestured to the utility room, ‘and when I next remembered about poor Digby, he just wasn’t here. Your dad’s gone out to look for him in the car.’

‘Right.’ I thought quickly. ‘Do you know which way he went?’

‘Oh dear, no, I don’t. Can I do something? Make you a cup of tea?’