He exits Chase and Munroe’s with a gift-wrapped bottle of Eau de Tristesse and a plan of romantic execution. It is old hat, of course, for a partner in a threatened relationship to take the other away on a long weekend in the hope of injecting a fillip of romance into the boredom. In general, the about-to-be-left spouse proves as deludedly optimistic as a doctor injecting a corpse with antibiotics. But this is because they are flinging the idea of romance in their once-lover’s face: their destinations are Paris or Venice, Amsterdam or Prague. Such cities may forge new lovers and impel them to tangle themselves in rented sheets, but no on-the-edge couple can withstand the onslaught of beautiful architecture, overpriced beer, and the young people snogging on bridges. Logan’s plan is more subtle; it’s personal. For who but he knows his wife’s attachment to a seaside house in Sussex, just outside Worthing, where she lived with her brother when they were students? This morning he googled the place, now a holiday let. The perfume will be appreciated, but its predictability will disarm her for the real gift, to which he will drive her, under a blindfold, the weekend after his court appearance. She will open her eyes. She will be surprised. But it’s the key to Warbler’s End that will make her cry.

‌Mad

The train into London feels interminable. It snakes slowly through the suburbs, as if to fill Logan with the deepest sense of pointlessness it can muster. The miserable houses whose gardens back onto the railway track are all in need of maintenance; soffits and barge boards green with neglect, tiles missing, an ancient conservatory coming to its knees to pray for its own demolition. He wonders what kind of people allow their homes to degrade so. Whether the general degradation is a symptom of insufficient funds or is simply not noticed, the residents so transfixed by their televisions that they are oblivious to the quiet collapse of their homes.