‘Pshh, we didn’t drink that much,’ Atticus says, looking out at the sea.

‘Yes, we did.’ Dan thinks of all the shots. ‘You’re not hung-over at all. It’s as if you didn’t have a single drink.’

Atticus looks at him quickly, then back to the tide. ‘I used to drink more than I do now.’ It’s unusual for Atticus to allude to his past like this. He normally jokes that nothing happened to him until he met Dan, which was ‘the first day of my life’.

Dan wishes he felt better. He would like to snip and prune at this hint about a drinking problem. His face must show it because Atticus says, ‘No counselling, please. I said I used to. I don’t any more. Does it seem like I have a drinking problem?’

‘No,’ Dan is forced to admit.

Atticus leans over and kisses him on the cheek. ‘Get up, Count Danula. Sea air and a brisk walk is all you need. You’ll be fine. And I should know, right, raging ex-alcoholic that I am?’

All Dan can do is tuck away the little titbit, like a squirrel with a nut in its cheek, something to gnaw at later.

They pack their bags and Atticus writes a long message in the visitor book about how well he slept and how delightful he found the service. ‘I’ll be sure to book the same room for our honeymoon,’ he tells the receptionist, then offers her a high-five, which she refuses. Dan sleeps all the way home on the train.

The whole weekend was so oddly strange and weirdly wonderful that Dan hasn’t looked at his phone once. He finally gets it out as the taxi pulls up outside his house, and it is only then that he sees all the missed calls from Luke.

Lizzie

(I told you so)

LIZZIE IS NOT ARRESTED. She’s told to call her husband. She’d have preferred the handcuffs.

Rowdy, cross at having her time wasted, puts on her hat and gives Lizzie a final look of disgust before letting herself out.

‘Can I have some time alone?’ Lizzie’s voice is small. The voice of a broken woman.

‘You have five minutes.’ Tess’s tone is clipped. The voice of a woman barely holding in her anger. That used to be Lizzie’s voice. Now they’ve switched roles.

Lizzie wishes she didn’t know the number off by heart, but she does. She hasn’t forgotten a thing. The phone rings twice before it’s snatched up. Greg’s voice is desperate.

‘Beth?’

She realizes he must have been answering the phone this way since the day she left him.

‘Greg.’

His voice sounds the same, gravelly, northern, perfectly pitched at ninety hertz.

‘Where are you? Where’s my son? Are you safe?’

Safe. He’s still worried about her, after all this. ‘Yes. We’re in Brighton.’

‘Brighton? Where?’