The flat feels empty around her. Jake’s absence confuses her. It’s difficult to gauge the time, and she’s unsure of where her phone is. Distantly, she remembers him leaving earlier that evening to take Matthew home to his mother. That was when she had lain down on the sofa, exhausted from their afternoon, and from the child’s whinnying demands, his petulant sulks, all their efforts to appease him. She must have fallen asleep, sinking far deeper than she had intended. Touching her fingertips to her forehead, she feels the tightness of her skin and recalls, with a groan of regret, the hours spent under the blazing heat of the sun in Hilary and Greg’s garden. The feeling of desiccation runs deeply through her, as if every cell in her body is crying out for hydration.

In the darkness, she makes her way to the kitchen sink. She runs the tap and leans over the basin, scooping water with her bare hand into her mouth, lapping like a cat. After a minute, she turns off the tap and leans on the counter, her whole body swamped with tiredness. The little digital clock on the cooker, the numbers normally illuminated green, is dark. And when Leah reaches for the switch on the wall and flicks it, the lights fail to come on.

‘Great,’ she says aloud. A power cut.

Through the darkness, her eyes are drawn to the moonlight falling on the patio slabs beyond the French windows, pressing up behind it the deep black mass of the garden. Her thoughts run to candles and matches, with no idea of whether they possess these things or where they might be.

By now, her eyes have adjusted to the dark. She seeks out her phone and finds it on the kitchen table. When she presses it, she sees it’s well past midnight. Scrolling quickly through, she finds no message from Jake, no WhatsApp to explain his delayed absence, no voicemail to check she’s okay. Instinctively, she starts to call him, but before she hits the button, hesitation stays her thumb. Anxiety pulses through her, a niggling doubt. She thinks of him going back to that little house with Matthew, imagines Jenna waiting, sun-kissed from a day in the garden, sipping a cool beer. Perhaps the suggestion is made that he stay a while, just until the boy is asleep. Her imagination tumbles forward, unspooling into dark corners. The two of them – Jake and his ex – sitting alongside each other in the twilit garden, sharing a beer, laughing over something their son has said or done, that old connection announcing itself suddenly, surprising them both. Despite the warmth of the day, Leah feels cold.