But you couldn’t live thinking that, could you? So you constructed this story where you were a business expert, specializing in time management. You filled every second with some sort of meaning. You used every minute, every hour well. Because that felt like winning. You concentrated on gossiping about the Chinese woman at the laundry chute, you booked the seaside weekend with Dec, you relished the thundering applause after your speech. Enjoyed your bank balance. Posted impressive summaries online. If all these things could be real, then death couldn’t also be real: it was too stupid, it didn’t make sense. So for almost all of every day – all those hoarded minutes, all that time you managed – everything seemed fine. Life seemed like the truth; what came next, you could forget.

The sun was still on good form, outside, drenching Exhibition Gardens with egg-yolk light; it seemed to stay high in the sky for so long, down here. And to stay so hot. They were almost back at the office.

‘We’re going to listen to our breathing,’ she muttered.

‘Sorry, ma’am, you want to listen to what?’ said the ever-helpful driver. She wouldn’t dock him a star. She’d give him the five. It wasn’t his fault.

‘So – let me get this right, Gideon,’ the female presenter was saying, over her colleague’s rising yelps of stage mirth, ‘you’ve never eaten chocolate, been on a plane, or seen a cow?’

1.

1.

1.

There was no list to make. Steffi was the one in charge. Another dispatch from her, now.

Guys. We are gaining more and more people and maybe we are close to a breakthrough. If you have ANY information about James please say it.

There were things Sal could do. She could create a job for James, bring him out here. Give him a new start. That was all he needed. She could call Mum more often, and be more attentive when she did call. She wasn’t in charge, she should stop thinking she was ‘in charge’, but there were things she could do. When this was over.

She picked up the phone. Even the act of sending another text in James’s direction – even if you don’t want to talk to me, please please talk to someone – reminded her of what was lurking further up the chain of conversation: the five, six, seven old texts from James, every month or so, trying to rekindle things between them, expressing the hope that they could ‘sort this out’. Every one of them unanswered by Sal. Not because she was deliberately being heartless, she’d thought; just, you moved on.