Dan thinks of the husbands he has counselled, after they had taken up road cycling, lost weight and had the affair with their secretary. After they had moved into a one-bedroom flat littered with takeaway boxes, cheap underwear and silence where their family should have been. After they had crawled back, tails between their toned thighs, and begged their wives to forgive them, offering to go and ‘see someone’. Like Fitz, when he thinks he’s been forgiven before the stolen sausage has even been swallowed, the husbands would come, full of remorse, but quickly decide they’d repented enough. Then there would be the moment when they shrugged their shoulders, looked at Dan and said, ‘I know it was a stupid thing to do, but, Jesus, man, she was something, know what I mean? No one could have said no to her.’ For a moment the wife was forgotten again as their face lit up with a dreamlike sheen. Dan, loyal as his Labrador and prim as a schoolmistress, would clear his throat and say something like, ‘How did you meet your wife?’

But there is something about Atticus. Something in the way the air bends around him, about the shape of his spine. Dan has a premonition that one day he could be in counselling with a dreamlike sheen on his face, trying and failing to regret whatever is about to happen.

Because something is going to happen. Dan can feel it, feel the universe holding its breath. A wrinkle in time, when the clocks stop and traffic halts. Birds pause in mid-flight and boats perch atop static waves. Dan panics under the pressure. ‘I don’t think I can help you, Atticus,’ he says quickly.

Atticus’s eyes are Fitz-like when they look at him. ‘I know. But please can you try? Just for a little while?’

Dan’s answer, after a pause, is a single nod.

The universe can’t wait for them any longer.

Lizzie

(I don’t wanna talk about it)

THE AIR INSIDE IS pea-soup thick. Dust spirals in shafts of sunlight. Some of the women call it magical, but Lizzie thinks the place just needs a good vacuuming. It’s a big house and must have been beautiful once. Now it’s like the women who live inside it – bruised, used, dressed in items scavenged from rummage sales and charity shops. There is the odd bit of glamour, a starburst mirror in the entrance hall and a sheepskin rug spread over a chaise longue. The windows, though smeared, are large and topped with art deco panels of yellow and red. The banister has ornate spindles and a newel cap shaped like a giant acorn. The floorboards are the colour of honey, covered with home-made rag rugs in rainbow colours. Someone seems to be doing an experiment on how much water orchids need. Some fall lopsidedly in dry soil, while others float in yellowing water that smells of rot.