Lindsay sighed and finished her second pint. It was nearly nine o’clock, and she felt like she hadn’t slept properly for days. In the ladies’, she splashed water over her tired eyelids, then set off on the long journey across London to Helen’s. Outside the pub, to be on the safe side, she set off on a wide detour that would bring her via side streets to the top end of Highbury Fields, so she could approach the tube station from a diametrically opposite direction to Penny’s flat. Better safe than sorry if the cops happened to be keeping an eye open at the station.

Her route took her down the side of the park, past tall, narrow houses that looked out across the variegated greens of trees and grass. It was a view she knew well. There had been a time when she had regarded one of those tall houses as her home. It had belonged to her lover, Cordelia. When Lindsay had moved in with her after their relationship had pushed her into abandoning her old life in Glasgow, she had thought that love was enough and for ever. “How wrong can you get?” she muttered under her breath as she passed what had been her front door during what she looked back on as the time of the Great Illusion. Neither love nor Cordelia had proved to be what they seemed, and Lindsay still carried the scars. It had been a nice view, though, she thought fondly, wondering who lived there now and if it still belonged to Cordelia, the rent funding her permanent exile.

As the station grew nearer, caution forced nostalgia to the back of her mind. With sinking heart, Lindsay noticed there were a couple of police officers talking to a Big Issue vendor on the station approach. Slipping her backpack off her shoulder, she carried it by her side like a bag and walked briskly into the station, looking right nor left. As she turned to go down the stairs, she risked a quick glance back. Neither police officer was looking in her direction. Grinning to herself, Lindsay trotted down to the platform and waited for her train. The only way they were going to catch up with her now was if they still had her fingerprints on file. After all these years, she doubted that. Even paranoia had to call it a day some time.

By the time she made it back to Helen’s, reaction had set in, perfect partner to her growing jet lag. Her knees felt disconnected from her legs, her hands had a tremble she couldn’t be bothered trying to control and her eyes felt grittier than they did on days when the wind whipped the sand on Half Moon Bay into a hazy cloud. “Oh, God,” she groaned, closing the front door behind her and leaning against it.

A woman in faded 501s and a white T that told the world “My grannie was working class” pressed “pause” on the video remote control and looked across at her, dark blue eyes crinkling in a smile. “You’ll be Lindsay,” she said. “I’m Kirsten.” She jumped to her feet and thrust her hand out.