By the final kilometre – after about forty minutes of running, by far the longest stretch he’d ever done – James was starting to doubt whether that was true. Even if Michaela was prepared to hang around, they would surely move people on once they’d finished. But in a way it was lucky, because the sight of him would be enough to kill what was between them. His chest hurt, he was panting like a dog invited to chase a ball around a field, and the sweat had glued his shirt to his back. His race number was half-off, drooping from the vest; other runners were passing him as if he wasn’t moving at all. The banner for the finish line appeared in front of him at last, but then seemed to get no closer for a long time, and when the line eventually came he stumbled over it and then slumped down to his hands and knees.

It had been a terrible, painful slog to achieve a distance which many runners would do a couple of times a week. But even three months ago he wouldn’t have been able to run if an axe-murderer was after him. Through the exhaustion he recognized, with a swelling of the chest, that he’d surprised and surpassed himself. Just: where was Michaela?

He had to get clear of the finish area, with its crowds of recovering runners, before his phone signal came back. There was no text from her, and he began to have misgivings. After waiting for a couple of minutes, he pressed the button to call her.

‘Where are you?’ She sounded groggy, confused.

‘Where are you?’

There were the muffled noises of Michaela moving around; she put the phone down for a second, or dropped it. Then her voice was back, and loud.

‘Fucking hell! I’ve missed it!’

Her plan to get a good night’s sleep had worked; it had been much too good, and she’d slept through the race. The race she had dragged him into, and for which she had been preparing much longer than him. She made these points in the strongest possible terms, cursing herself, her phone and its manufacturers, her mother whose deep sleeping was a genetic inheritance, an owl whose hooting had woken her at 2 a.m., and all the five thousand people who had completed the run. James, sweaty and disarranged, listened helplessly as her roll of accusations went on – for reasons he couldn’t quite follow – to the Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg.

‘There’ll always be another one,’ he said, sounding to himself like Dad, consoling the kids after an event ruined by rain. ‘If we look online, there’ll be—’

‘OK, I know what we’ll do,’ said Michaela. ‘Stay there. Meet me at the gates.’