‘I know what it’s like when those feelings come. The desolation. The awful emptiness inside.’ He’d kept his voice low and steady. ‘It’s not good to be alone with those kinds of thoughts. A slippery slope. Who knows where they might lead?’

Both of them had been down that path before. Their own separate journeys along that forlorn stretch of road. Weeks now since his own mishap, and in those days afterwards, when she’d come to him, coaxing him from the darkness of his depression, there was a moment when she’d revealed her own despair. It had happened when she was fifteen, shortly after the child’s death. Pills. She had panicked after swallowing them and told her parents moments later. A disaster swerved but not completely averted. Something like that stays with you.

‘I couldn’t have it on my conscience, sweetheart, if you did something to harm yourself, knowing I might have helped.’ He watched as the tears came, falling soundlessly. The heaving sobs had abated, replaced now by silence and a stillness within her that did, in fact, worry him a little.

‘Take a sip, love,’ he said softly, moving the glass towards her. She drank obediently, which pleased him, pushed him to say, ‘You need to rest. To get some sleep. But I hate the thought of you going back down there to that gloomy apartment, especially after what’s just happened. You there all alone, with no one looking after you. I’m not sure it’s a good idea, Leah,’ his voice silky with concern.

He watched as a tear slipped down her cheek, falling on to the sleeve of her dressing-gown, making a little spreading stain through the fabric – some kind of nylon, it was. It had crackled with static electricity when he’d put his arms around her earlier.

‘There is, of course, the room upstairs,’ he offered, keeping his voice light while the blood thumped thickly through his chest. ‘Charlotte’s room. It would put my mind at ease, Leah, knowing you were not downstairs maybe doing something terrible. You would be welcome to rest there for the night, if you’d like.’

Two nights now, as it happens.

Anton puts the olives back in the cloth bag, and gets to his feet, moving in the direction of the park gates. He stops to buy bread at the One In the Oven stall, then continues, taking his time, a leisurely stroll. He knows she’ll still be there when he gets back, and half the pleasure is in the anticipation.