And then he’ll meet Tom on a walk with Fitz. Tom will be nothing like Atticus. He will be shorter than Dan and utterly ordinary and won’t have a clue about art. His puppy, Albert, will be naughty, though, and Dan will teach Tom how to train him to come back. Well, Fitz will, but he’ll let Dan think it was him.

In return, Tom will retrieve a little bit of Dan’s heart – not the whole lot, because Cat Stevens was right: the first cut is the deepest. Atticus was Dan’s Emperor Penguin. For him, Dan would have stood in the freezing snow, surviving on nothing but ice and love. He would have held Atticus’s fragile egg-like life on his feet, protected it from the wind.

Dan cannot offer that to anyone else. His poor heart is too tired. It has stopped a couple of times, been too lost in pleasure to remember its beat. It has been coated in iron and hung from a hook. It is bruised and scarred, and Dan will never not be aware of it any more. He feels it ticking away inside him like the Tin Man’s. He has learned that the heart is not a muscle but a clock, which can stop short, never to go again.

Dan doesn’t have much to offer Tom, just his company and his quirkiness. He will care about his day, think about him when it’s dark and he’s not home yet. One day he will even find enough love to move in with him and hang his Star Wars poster on their living-room wall. Luke and Smurf-girl will come over on Sundays and rainy days, and for quiz nights and taco Tuesdays.

The photo of Dan and Atticus in Paris will always live on his desk, though, and Dan will look at it just before the door opens on a new client, and he will think, I’m glad you didn’t die before I met you.

Beth

(Moving on)

BETH IS LEARNING WHO she is. Not Lenny’s mum or Greg’s wife. Not a woman with postnatal depression. Not a liar or a beaten wife or a husband-beater. Not a cheater. Not Lizzie. She’s just who she is – a woman who was ill and is getting better. She takes the pills, lining them up like dominoes, but instead of falling, she’s standing up.

She feels the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors marching through her system, like stern matrons from the 1940s. Trampling down her receptors, cleaning her veins, checking her vitals, topping up her internal water jugs. She can feel herself getting better. No longer needs word searches to keep her occupied. Her mind is getting clearer each day, like sheets drying in the sun. She is thawing.