The result of last night’s gravel drive contemplations was this: he must see Dr Salmon. For Dr Salmon’s past actions must be read out of her head as a future is read out of tea leaves, and Logan cannot read a person of her complexity down the phone. In matters of high importance, he is dependent on subtleties of facial expressions and body language: those barely perceptible giveaways on which his reputation for accurate assessment rests.

The receptionist’s Sit, even with its embroidered Please, he ignores even more markedly than before. This time he stands not at the information boards but at the plate-glass windows of the entrance, the better to watch the rain that once again accompanies his visit. His face is arranged to hold no more expression than an unaddressed envelope. Behind his back, his hands clasp one another in firm and supportive brotherhood. He is on business, and here is the stance of a man on business: focused, formal, controlled.

The awareness, nevertheless, like an itch: the last time they spoke, Logan was hyperventilating. She had caught him in free fall, floated him down to the ground. This time, his feet would be pillars planted on the earth; he, the unshakeable edifice. So he had determined through three hours of self-talk on the journey here, and so it would be. Thus, when a voice behind him says,

Logan!

he is able to reply with a cool nod,

Dr Salmon.

And when her next remark is,

Goodness, this is out of the blue,

he fishes effortlessly for the sour comedy of

Out of the grey, surely?

without so much as gifting her a smile. He will not be hooked into friendship. He says,

I’m here to talk about Ms Smith.

His subject made opaque under the formality of address, for, since the bombing, no one has referred to the young woman as Ms Smith, who might be anyone, but always April Smith, with its inappropriate crack of sunshine. Dr Salmon’s face becomes blank for a moment until her train of thought reaches the logical station.

Of course. April,

and her brows twist up and release in their own silent conversation (What’s up with him? – Say nothing!).