Ellen’s letter. The row with Betty. He gets off the bed too quickly and has to lean against the wall on the way to the spare room to keep his balance. He throws open the door, telling himself it was all just a dream, but he knows he’s wrong before he even turns the handle. The spare room is as empty as it was the night before. Every single trace of Ellen is gone. George does a slow scan of the room to make one last check. Behind the open door is a cardboard box. George lifts it and underneath it is the Singer sewing-machine.

George sinks to the floor and reaches out for Poppy, who’s followed him. He brings her little black-and-tan body towards his face, and for the first time since Ellen died, George sobs for his wife.

Dan

(I’ve heard that one before)

‘ASK LUKE TO HAVE Fitz again,’ Atticus implores Dan. ‘I want to take you away. We could go to Paris.’

‘I can’t. I have work, and the Ironman training.’ Dan smiles and tries to get out of bed, but Atticus pulls him back.

‘Just for a couple of nights. I’m sure Luke can train on his own for two days.’

It’s the morning after the previous night, when they became one mass of molecules for the first time. After the sex had ended but they were still combined, carbon and hydrogen, yet to re-form as two separate entities, Dan had realized he wanted to know all of Atticus. Nothing could be more exposing, more intimate, than the experience they had shared. Dan had given Atticus his body, his virginity. His trust. He hoped, in return, that Atticus might give him some honesty.

And so he asked, once more, for the truth: ‘You never did tell me. Why did you come to counselling?’

But instead of the truth, Atticus had looked at him, stroked a finger down his face and, in a voice that sounded almost sad, had said, ‘To find you, of course.’

‘But you didn’t know you’d find me.’

‘But I did. Now, nothing else matters.’ Atticus had combed his long fingers through Dan’s hair, and it felt like walking into a room with an open fire after missing the bus and walking home in a storm.

‘So, there was something else, some matter?’ Dan pushed sleepily.

‘If there was, it’s all gone now. It’s been replaced by you,’ Atticus said, and the next thing Dan remembered was waking up curled around another person for the first time in his life. Then the delight of naked flesh and Atticus’s morning growl.