So it wasn’t Sean. He’d just assumed. Although why he’d assumed that, why he’d assigned ‘S’ to Sean, he now couldn’t remember. His brain hasn’t been working well recently. He’s had to shut down so much of it to stop himself thinking about Flora. Protecting himself from the truth was an indiscriminate process: it began with avoiding the word ‘daughter’ and ended in an aversion to the smell of freshly mown grass. Painful fragments could attach themselves to almost anything. He wondered if this was where Alzheimer’s began: a yearning for a specific forgetfulness that arrived obediently, but spread, by the process of connection, from neurone to neurone until the mind was a blank.

And now he has to think. ‘S’ wasn’t Sean. So who had sent him the article? Who does he know whose name begins with S, who might want to ruin him?

Another knock on the door. Jules again, this time with a cup of coffee in her hand. Clearly not hers, from the way she is holding it: a little away from herself, like an offering to an angry god.

I thought you could do with it.

She places it carefully on his circuit-board coaster (Flora’s gift), turns the handle towards him. He looks at her unmade-up face, the face he stole from happiness.

I’m making scrambled eggs, she says. Do you want some?

I’ll come down, he says. She leaves.

S.

Simon Merriweather? But it’s been years, more than a decade, since Jules left her fiancé crying in a National Trust car park. And maybe three years since their last awkward meeting, in the pasta aisle of Waitrose. And after Flora’s death, didn’t he send that card with the letter inside expressing his sorrow and regret? Surely he would have moved on long ago, a good man like that, raised to forgive, not avenge, a busy man with fistulas to fix—

Simon, he says to his wife’s egg-stirring back. How’s he doing these days? Do you know?

You care why? asks Jules, turning round.

Do you know how he’s doing? he asks again. Has he been in contact at all?

She blushes. There’s something there. She turns back to the eggs.

Not exactly, she says.

Logan sits down at the table. He watches her back. More stirring.

What do you mean, not exactly?

Her left hand moves to her hip. An unconscious defensive gesture.

I follow his status updates.

TwitFacing. He doesn’t like it. Doesn’t like her doing it.

Since when?

She goes to the fridge. Retrieves the packet of smoked salmon, slides out the foiled inner card, laces two plates with thin, pink slices.

A few months ago.

No expression at all in her voice. He’s betting it’s in her face, if only he could see it.

Any particular reason?