He’d known, of course. The imbalance had been so obvious. He loved her, after a couple of months she’d seen it; after three, he’d told her. At that point she’d just about been able to fudge it – it was happening, she said, he was just ahead of her – but after a year, shamefully, she’d had to lie. Was it really lying, though? Maybe this was her version of love now. Maybe what she’d felt with and for Ade – respect, affection, comfort – was her real deal. She’d told him about Samir; that was how much she trusted him.

Which was why, when he proposed, she’d been angry. Not angry – furious. Hadn’t he understood? No, it was worse: he had. He’d known that under normal circumstances, at full strength, she wouldn’t have accepted. He’d waited until she’d lost her job and run out of money. He’d waited until she was defenceless, to give himself a fighting chance.

Lying in bed at the flat that night, seething, she’d had to stop herself ringing him. What happens next, in your mind? she’d wanted to ask. I become the beta to your alpha, the unemployed woman living in your house, on your money? Did he want them to have a baby – quick, she was thirty-five? Do that first, time is of the essence, sort your career out later, when the kids are bigger. We’ve got enough on my salary, no need for you to work.

She gave herself a little shake: stop it. That was all over, finished, done.

Lennie had already gone out to the car when Christine had pulled Robin aside. ‘Here.’ She’d reached for her hand and pressed a loose roll of notes into it. ‘To tide you over.’

‘Mum …’ She hadn’t known what to say.

‘Well, you can’t go down there to London with nothing, can you?’ said Christine, abrupt. ‘It’s ridiculous. Go on, you’re keeping poor Lennie waiting.’

Outside, when Robin looked, she saw that she’d given her a hundred pounds.

Two and a half hours later, they stopped for the lights at the roundabout on the raised section of the Westway over White City. Robin looked at London laid out in front of them. Once, in her early twenties, she’d stopped just here on a day when the sky had been high and sheer, Lennie asleep in her car seat, thumb in, the city shimmering in the heat. I’ve done it, she remembered thinking, I’ve made it. Now, twelve years later, here she was again with her tail between her legs, spat out by London like a piece of gristle.

She circled Shepherd’s Bush Green then came round to Wood Lane, where she pulled over as close as she could to the long flight of steps outside Debenhams. ‘There you are, madame: Westfield, your oyster.’

‘Thanks, Mum.’ Len reached for the handle.