Once all was ready, they said goodbye to Loren, who managed watery smiles. With a feeling of unreality Nico pushed the buggy bearing a toddler in pyjamas and a big coat through the chilly October streets, bags hooked over the handles. Josie hadn’t needed a buggy for five years so he felt stiff and clumsy as he negotiated kerbs. Maria sang to herself for a couple of minutes then, no doubt exhausted, plummeted into the sudden sleep of the very young.

Josie kept glancing silently, uncertainly at Nico.

He wasn’t happy with the situation but they were in it so it was up to him to make it work. ‘So, this is a surprise.’ He made his voice encouraging and calm and not as if the logistics of what came next were frying his brain. He had less than twenty-four hours in which to arrange childcare for a two-year-old. ‘Shall we make up the pull-out bed in your room for Maria?’ A mattress on wheels slid out from beneath the pink frame of Josie’s bed. It was meant for the occasional school friend sleeping over but it would suit a toddler.

Josie nodded, managing a quick, watery smile. ‘And if she wakes up in the night I’ll cuddle her until she goes back to sleep.’

She was so quick with the response that Nico suspected, with a flash of anger, that it must already be a familiar situation. He toyed with saying something to remove the responsibility but decided that if Maria cried he’d hear her and would naturally intervene.

Once Nico had manoeuvred the buggy through their front door, wondering if the space had narrowed since he’d last tried it, he left Maria slumbering peacefully while he made up the pull-out bed. Josie alternated between excited assistance, shrill uneasiness and getting in his way. The ability to ease a slumbering toddler out of a coat and slide her into bed didn’t seem to have deserted him and soon Maria lay looking tiny in the bed, fair hair curling over the pillow, eyelashes thick enough to cast their own shade on her cheeks. Nico wondered with detachment whether the curls came from her father. All he knew about him was that he had had a fling with a married woman and ignored his own kid.

That it had ended his marriage Nico had minded especially for Josie. He remembered the feelings of loss and grief when his own parents had parted, even though, at fourteen, he’d been better equipped to cope.

Purely for himself, the end of the relationship had, along with the sorrow, brought some relief. No more pretending he didn’t mind living a sterile existence in which he could hardly remember what a woman’s touch felt like. No more putting up with. No more being embarrassed by.